Dr. James Hollis

But then when you've done that, you know, why are you still here?

What's the purpose?

Are you simply here to be a creature of adaptations?

Now, without those adaptations, we would be overwhelmed typically by the circumstances of our lives.

So we accommodate them in some way.

But in the second half of life, and I'm using a term very loosely here,

the real question is, what does the soul want of me?

You know, what does the psyche want of me?

And that's a different question.

Then the issue comes up, what is it that is wishing expression in the world through me?

That's a different question than what does the world ask of me?

The people that we would most admire in history are people who in some way found and lived out what the soul was asking of them.

It didn't spare them from suffering, sometimes even martyrdom.

It doesn't spare you from conflict and pain, maybe isolation, maybe exile, but you're fed by the purposefulness of it.

Take that away and life is pretty empty.

And of course, we live in a culture where there's this enormous barrage of external stimuli.

Well, buy this, purchase that, do this or that, the latest thing and this or that, the newest shiny thing.

And the more I'm seeking to define myself through that environmental summons,

the more likely I'm going to be estranged from something inside.

All of us know it, but we don't know what to do about that at some level.