Three Big Questions
/In her memoir Inheritance, author Dani Shapiro writes about the identity crisis she faced when a genetic test indicated that her deceased father was not her biological father. While struggling through her grief and feeling lost, she went to an acupuncturist who asked her, mid-session, if she was familiar with “the three great spiritual questions”:
1. “Who am I?”
2. “Why am I here?”
3. “How shall I live?”
While reading Dani’s beautiful story, those three questions kept looping through my brain. I wanted to be able to answer those three big questions myself, which sent me on my own journey to find out. I worked at it. I thought about these questions during walks, captured pages of my thoughts on paper, and eventually I realized I had developed my answers to those three questions. It felt good to be able to answer those with clarity and confidence, but it took some work to get myself there. To me it felt like a new level of peace, a deeper sense of knowing myself, and clarity on what was truly important to me.
I talk with people every day of all ages who are searching for those same huge, existential answers. If you can’t answer them, you are not alone. And I have found my own answers continue to evolve as I age and have more life experiences.
Our identity, purpose, and values change over our many chapters of life.
This is a practice of pondering that I hope you will return to periodically to renew your sense of who you are, what your purpose is, and how you align your life to living according to your values.
I’ll share a bit of my answers with the hope that it might inspire you to spend some time developing your own.
Who am I? I am a loving soul. I am a mother, wife, and daughter. I am a teacher of love and compassion. I am someone who is connected to a higher power that I call God. I am someone who is doing their best. I am someone having a human experience, which means I’m learning from my mistakes and hoping to grow every day.
Why am I here? I am here to be the love in the room. My purpose is to make people feel loved, seen, heard, understood, and worthy. My contribution to humanity right now is to help people feel less alone in struggles, provide tools and resources to help them feel better, and to be a source of hope and inspiration.
How shall I live? At this time in life, I value learning, integrity, connection, family, health, and fun. I want my days to feel meaningful. I want to remember to play. I want to laugh. I want to emit joy and love.
Sometimes, when I’m overwhelmed or need to center myself, I run through the whole list. Sometimes I just need to repeat to myself one of these phrases to regain perspective and find courage.
Before this work, I used to place my identity on successfully meeting the expectations of everyone around me. But doing that, caused me to lose myself in the process. Now, finding the essence of who I think I am (at this moment in time) has allowed me to be more authentic, vulnerable, and confident. I wish this for all of us.
Try This:
Place your name in the middle of a blank piece of paper and write words that describe you all over the page. Let yourself free-write, don’t edit or overthink, just write down what comes to mind. Keep going until you fill the page.
Write down all the things that come to mind when you ponder this question: If your lifetime resulted in one improvement for humanity, what is it? Or if that doesn’t resonate, try it this way: My wish for all people is to…
What three things/people/projects are most important to you at this moment? Are you living in alignment with the way you spend your time and those items?
Craft some “I am…” statements. Craft some “My purpose is…” statements. Craft some “I will live….” statements. When you feel lost or out of alignment, return to these statements as a reminder of your core identity and the essence of who you are right now. Then return to this exercise and update as life continues to unfold.
I’m on this journey with you in figuring out who we are and why we are here, I’m grateful we are on it together.
