“What do you love doing?”

Understanding “why do you love doing certain things”

There is a lot happening around us and whatever is happening, it is resulting in thoughts, emotions, and responses. The most discussed topic from age group 15–50 is not climate change, politics, and/or refugee situations. But it is “are you happy” with one common answer “I don’t know”.

The common binding storyline of almost all movies, TV shows, and comics is to make the lead character realize what they want and to grant them the joy of living. Isn’t it funny how a hundred theories are currently prevailing with some indicating of destiny, some focusing on individuals’ capacity to create their own destiny. But to be frank no one knows what they want and how life is happening.

We have discussed in the previous articles “how to identify the true desire”. To summarise it here, there is no true desire but multiple desires all of which are true and almost all of them are results of the influence of the data that your brain has accumulated over the period of existence. So, Does that mean there is no such thing as a calling, destiny, something that inspires one to work toward a certain goal and live life toward a certain future? The answer is “maybe not” and “maybe”. It is actually kind of complex when you look at the question with this thought. But there is a simple version of exploring the same question.

Your mind is the result of what your brain has accumulated over your period of existence. The joys, sorrows, love, hatred, and almost every emotion that you have felt over your life have been recorded to help you excel in your future/ or perhaps only to help you survive any similar event. Thus your brain often enjoys certain actions and events more than others and it often tries to escape from other situations where it doesn’t feel that comfortable. That’s the sole reason you enjoy some things and avoid some. Now, to say you have a fixed destiny would be wrong because that’s actually not true. Though there are definitely events and spheres of life that you can enjoy more compared to some others. Anyone who is aware of their mind can be free of this limitation, but for someone who is not aware “their happiness is influenced by the events that are unfolding”. That’s the reason a lot of discussions are about how to identify the events, actions, and spheres of life where you can naturally enjoy. No one cares whether these spheres are fixed or can be altered. People only want the easy answer and thus the question of “how to find your calling, love, passion, goal blah blah blah….” are discussed almost every day.

Identifying “What do you love doing”

Identifying what you love doing is probably the easiest task and also the hardest one. For people who are settled within themselves and not burdened by the thoughts and ideas of past/ future, it becomes very easy. For people who are consumed by the ideas and thoughts of past & future, this becomes really difficult. But, in reality it is simple.

Let me start with a simple story that i read somewhere. A devotee asked Buddha how he could find what is his unique desire. Buddha smiled and took him to nearby pond and asked what do you see beneath the water. The devotee told about the fishes, the corals and sand. Now buddha picked up a stick and stirred the water, it created ripples and motion within water. Buddha again asked, “what do you see now?”. This time the devotee said i can see the mud and commotion but nothing else. Buddha asked him to wait for some time and when the water settled he asked again “what do you see now”. The devotee could again see the fishes, sand and pebbles lying on the pond floor. Buddha told him, this is the same way to find your own uniqueness. Currently, the past memories and the future expectations have clouded your awareness. In order to find yourself you need to drop them. Once you drop the past and the future you will know what you are and what you want.

Now relating to the story with real life. Currently every time one faces the question of “what they love doing” or “what they should be doing?”. They combine the question with multiple other questions such as:

“What my parents, family, colleagues, teachers, society expects from me?” “They try predicting what would be in demand in future?”. “What would be more favourable and how the future could be better by picking any task?” But none of these questions can answered correctly. There are enough possibilities and everyone can be true in certain future. However, thinking about these things cloud your judgement.

Those who wish to find what they love and what they should be doing drop the thoughts of past and future. They see what they did in past and which things they enjoyed, which things they did not enjoy. They try to see why they did not enjoy certain things and why they did enjoy certain others. Looking at the journey of evolution it becomes really simple. Anyone can pick a few things that they enjoyed in the past and then engage in them. This engagement is simply and experiment and when one experiments they uncover the truth of liking something or not.

So next time, you happen to get confused of what you want with your life. Try thinking what you enjoyed in your life, Why did you enjoy that and spot the pattern.