Why are you here?

I recently ran across Simon Sinek's videos online.  That's kind of weird, because the last 40 of my 51 years of life have been trying to find out the "why?" of life.  Like many, my childhood was one of daily pain, misery, and simply trying to survive.  At age eleven, I really began wondering what the point was.  What is the point of life itself?  Why are we here on this planet with so much struggle and pain and corruption and just plain mean people.  What could possibly be the purpose to it all?

While others focused on creating lives and careers and family as we grew up, I wandered through a series of weird jobs.  I found early success, but it didn't bring happiness.  I've been through some pretty tough trials.  I kept plugging away, even though there seemed to be no point to life much of the time.

Early on in my search, I heard this ridiculous idea that we are spiritual beings of some sort, and that we venture into these physical bodies on planet Earth to learn what we can in this realm.  OK, every tribe around the world, every religion believes in some sort of soul or spirit that is more than just our physical bodies.  That's not what seemed crazy to me.  What seemed crazy was that some people think we "signed up" for the particular lives we are born into.  Some people believe that our souls actually pick our parents in a way, to push us to learn particular lessons that can only be learned by coming into this crazy world.

When I first heard that idea in my early 20's, it seemed absurd.  "I picked my parents and my extended family?  On purpose?  Have you met these people?"  I dismissed that crazy idea and went on reading books, answering lists of questions, fasting, meditating, and sessioning on my bike and sometimes on my skateboard.  I kept searching.

Little by little, bits of insight and understanding came to me.  Through crazy times and fun times, I struggled and occasionally soared.  Bit by bit, a bigger picture was revealed.  Now, at age 51, weighing in at 315 pounds and with few teeth left after my crazy journey, I've realized that small group of people I heard in my early 20's were right.  Our souls, or spirits, or whatever you want to call them, they pick the situation we're born into.  We did it to ourselves.

In a sense, life is the ultimate thrill ride, the toughest adventure race.  We "sign up" for our crazy adventures here on Earth.  But here's the kicker.  As soon as we enter these human bodies, we forget what we signed up for.  We not only have to try to survive this crazy world, we have to try and figure out why we're here in the first place.  All along the way we complain about the adventure, and most people get overwhelmed by it.

But think of it this way.  If you signed up for a Spartan race or a mud run, the point is to see if you can make it through the challenge.  It'd be pretty stupid to stop in the middle and say, "Why are you people torturing me like this?"  If you pay money to go to a haunted house at Halloween time, you don't fight the people in the house that jump out and scare you.  You paid money to have them jump out and scare you.  That's the whole point.

But in this adventure of life on Earth, we have the added challenge of amnesia.  We paid to enter this fun house, we signed up for this adventure, but part of the adventure is forgetting that we actually did come into these lives on purpose.  We bought a ticket to the "Human Being" adventure, and are then given amnesia, so a big part of the adventure is figuring out that it actually IS AN ADVENTURE.

From this point of view, everything changes.  So... why are you here?  What adventure did you sign up for?