Louisa Simpson

This question was a writing prompt the other week and it really called to me. As I started to think about it, though, I thought – what IS my mission? Do I even have one? Does anyone if they truly think about it? And it got me thinking. If we have a mission, we must live conscious lives. We must be conscious of what we do, why we do it, and how we feel about it. But that I would estimate that the majority of people live unconscious lives. Satisfying society rather than themselves. And that perhaps you need to get past that to have a mission for your life.

What do I mean about living unconsciously? I mean, just going through the motions. Living in our routine unthinkingly. That sense of this is what life is, this is what I do. We get up in the morning, we get clean and dressed for the day. We might eat something, drink something, perhaps do some exercise before we leave the house for the day or get to work in the house for the day. Maybe our lives are determined by the clock – an alarm clock that goes off, an amount of time to carry out our morning routines before we have to begin work. The set amount of hours in the day that we work before returning home. The time we have to cook and eat a meal. The amount of hours we have in the evening to spend relaxing in whatever that means for us, or just switching off our brains in front of the television. Then the time by which we need to go to sleep in order to get the requisite number of hours of sleep our bodies need. Lives determined by the clock so that we live unthinkingly. Lives where we don’t ask ourselves – what would happen if we changed that?

We don’t need to go through the motions. If anything, we are wasting the time we have here on earth if we just go through the motions and don’t wonder – do we have a purpose? Is there a point to being here? Our presence here on earth surely isn’t just an accident of biology. The result of two people procreating which either intentionally or not produced our existence. I don’t believe that’s all there is. I don’t think I ever have. I don’t believe we are here by accident. I believe we chose to be here, and we did so to fulfil a purpose. To follow our passions. To learn from this lifetime – and that if we continue to live with blinkers on, we won’t learn the lesson. So, we have to keep on repeating lives until we do learn. Until we awaken to what life is truly about. The beauty of life. The wonder that we can make it be and become.

I get that it’s scary to think ‘why are we here’? It’s scary to ask – what is my passion and how can I follow it? But, to me now it feels more scary to not have those thoughts, to not ask those questions. Because if we don’t, it all feels wasted. That we are denying ourselves the joy of living the true meaning of our lives. And that joy has repercussions for the collective conscious. It has repercussions for the world, and it has immense repercussions for your life and for you. It is also scary to think that we are responsible for the outcomes of our lives. We are solely responsible. There is no ‘other’ that influences our lives that we do not allow. Either by our lack of attention or because, deep down, it is easier to have someone else have impact on our lives. That someone we can blame so we don’t have to take responsibility. But we are responsible, even if it is just handing over control in that way. We have chosen to do it.

We can be scared that in having a mission, we will fail to realise it. That we set ourselves up for failure in setting down a mission even if it is just to ourselves and we don’t share it. Failing ourselves can be the bitterest of pills to swallow. But if we don’t? If we don’t create that mission for our lives? What then? We carry on as we always have, not really sure if we are happy because we don’t stop to ask ourselves that question. And how many of us ask ourselves that question – am I happy? Better still, what makes me happy? Wow, that can be a difficult question to answer. Often what comes back is ‘so and so’ makes me happy, or ‘such and such’ makes me happy. We externalise our happiness when actually, we can’t be truly happy until we internalise it. Because our happiness is no one else’s responsibility, and inanimate objects cannot bring us lasting happiness. What makes you happy when you’re on your own? Are you happy being on your own? If not, why not? What is it about the chatter in your mind that you can hear when you are alone that you try to drown out with the presence of others? Working out how we can find happiness even when everything in our lives may feel as though it’s falling down around us is when we can genuinely say, we know what makes us happy.

Since being made redundant from my last job, I have chosen to follow my passion: my writing and my spirituality. And it has meant that for the past 18 months, my life as I have known it has effectively fallen down around my ears. It’s been the most difficult period of my life and yet I have managed to write two books, self-publish one of them, and embark on writing the third. I have delved deep into spirituality and realised so much about myself and about how wonderful life can be. When I say my life has fallen down around my ears, it has been the material elements of my life. I have at times literally had no money and no idea of how I am going to put some food on the table that night. It has not been where I wanted to be, not by any measure, but I have known that returning to my old life is equally not an option. It is not where I am meant to be. Returning to my old career which, whilst relatively lucrative, would have been soul destroying for me. I have applied for those jobs (I’m not that irresponsible!) but during the process, I have felt as though my soul was shrivelling up. The internal resistance to the thought of being successful in the process was palpable. So much so, I am pretty sure I self-sabotaged. I could have done the jobs I applied for standing on my head. I’ve been doing some form of them for the past 20-odd years, and very successfully so. I have a good reputation, and yet I have failed to secure any of them. Neither interim nor permanent roles. Every time I have failed, my soul has rejoiced while my egoic mind has worried. But I have known at an incredibly deep level that I am meant to be doing what I am doing. That in some way, it will all come good and work out as it is meant to.

Things do have to fall apart before they can come back together again in a better, stronger way. I have drifted through my life very often and have allowed people into my life that I perhaps wouldn’t have done if I had truly thought about it. People I didn’t particularly warm to but at a superficial level they seemed ‘okay’. Some I even had reservations about but I ignored. It is probably no surprise that those people are the ones who have not been near me since I went from being the CEO of an economic agency to unemployed and on benefits to being a cleaner. They say you find out who your friends are in an emergency and it is very true. You also find out who in your family is worth sticking with, and the results can be sometimes shocking but also sometimes confirm what you already knew deep down. It’s a tough lesson, but it is so valuable. And interesting that when I do make it back to an acceptable level (in their eyes) of material worth, I am pretty sure they will all want to know me again. I’m not going to hold a grudge against them, they live their life their way and that is absolutely fine. But I don’t have to welcome them back into my life and I won’t do so. The people who have stuck with me, who have listened to me and still been in contact with me despite my straitened circumstances? They’re the ones who I will never let go of, and they have often come from the most unexpected places.

It’s difficult to explain to your husband, your son or your relatives who are worried about the future that everything will be fine, better than fine, when you have no empirical evidence to provide them with to prove that assertion. Saying ‘I just know’ has gotten tired for them I know. And for my mother I have now veered into the irresponsible and terrible mother territory for inflicting this hardship on my son when I could do something about it according to her. My husband has faith in my writing but a few times has let his true feelings slip – that in his eyes I am entirely to blame for the situation we are in, and he resents the loss of his comfortable life. He has never contributed financially and this whole experience has been illuminating for me in that regard as well. I have explained to him that for the past 10 years I have felt as though I am drowning under the weight of the responsibility of everything and that every time I tried to speak to him about it, I was shut down. It wasn’t a message he wanted to hear so I suspect he didn’t listen. The only person who has steadfastly stood by my side is my son. But then, my son is innately and intensely spiritual. He has said things to me, explained things to me since the age of 3 that have blown my mind. And probably got me on the spiritual path in the first place.

I realise that this is probably starting to seem like a cautionary tale when it comes to discovering and pursuing your passions and living your life consciously! For some it undoubtedly will be. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, I know there is. I know there is unlimited amounts of success – however I choose to define that – waiting there for me. I have learned so many lessons about myself and others that have been invaluable to me. I have healed wounds from my childhood in the process which I knew were there but which I had ignored – for example, I had a tendency for ‘keeping up with the Jones’s’ and providing my son with the best of all material things so that he didn’t suffer the ‘indignity’ I had of not having all the things my peers had had as children. And I’d put myself through misery doing so and trying to keep it up. But that kind of pride is destructive, and didn’t take my son into account at all. It was all about me, and I ignored the voice inside me that kept on telling me to stop. Until I had to stop, and take stock of everything. I have learned that sending my son to a school with the best academic record (and social kudos for me) doesn’t mean he is going to be taught to learn, but be taught to remember which made him unhappy. And to accept that a ‘lesser’ school might actually be better for him because he’s not interested in rote learning. He’s interested in understanding the information he’s being fed. I have learned that throwing money at a problem is not a solution, really thinking it through is. I have learned not to waste things like food, to be more conscious when purchasing and consuming it. I have learned that many ‘gurus’ don’t have the answer, that it is within me, and that there are a lot of people on the spiritual bandwagon that you can’t trust. But the ones who are authentic are mind blowing and amazing in their authenticity.

What was really shocking was that I did not know what my perfect, ideal outcome life was for me. I was so caught up with what I knew everyone else wanted that it had shut down anything I wanted before it even had chance to germinate. When I was asked ‘what do you want?’ I actually didn’t have an answer. And every time I did try to answer it, the thought cropped up ‘yes but what about so-and-so’. Every time. And then there was the social standing aspect of myself, borne from a difficult childhood. The physical manifestations of having climbed out of the abyss that I leaned towards at first – the things that showed the world I was worthy. Fighting my way past that has taken a long time. Because the reality is, I don’t want those showy things. I want to be cosy, comfortable, warm in my home. Yes, I want it to be nice and have luxuries but I don’t want a mansion. Think of all the window cleaning! I want to live a nice, quiet and peaceful life in a particular area that I know my soul has been calling for. A place where I feel an intense connection but which probably doesn’t appeal to everyone in my life – but I don’t care. It appeals to me. I currently live in a house and an area that didn’t appeal to me, though is large enough that it appealed to the materialist in me, and I have never felt completely comfortable here. I have no sense of community here and I have realised I need that, so I know the new place will satisfy me because it has the things I crave, and for the first time ever in my life I am going to go with that. I don’t know how I will get to live in that area financially, but I know I will achieve it. I even know the exact house I want to live in. I’ve gone over half a century pleasing others…now it’s my time and I will achieve my dreams.

I finally feel worthy in myself, without the need for the external and material things that I thought showed the world I was worthy. They’re built on shifting sands when they’re built from that premise. So, perhaps my mission in my life is to feel worthy within myself each and every day. To value myself first and foremost, to honour myself with knowing what I want for me not what everyone else around me wants. Yes, that is my mission in life. It’s been a long, hard and winding road to get here…but I cannot think of anywhere more perfect.