I think I found him.

Something I lost somewhere along the way leading up to this point; something I did not realise was hiding up until it was staring me in the face.

Something that stared back at me because I put it there, on a piece of paper just a short while before I decided to write this post.

Something so inherent to my very being that it wasn’t really missing at all, just covered by dirty footprints on mud and grime that collected over the years.

What did I write? I wrote myself.

But what exactly was it that I wrote on that actually tangible scrap of paper? And why?

Over the last few months or maybe years I’ve been wondering who am I exactly? Where am I going? How come I ran into so many problems along the way and ended up feeling so obliterated, but still struggled on. For what reason exactly? What to wake up for tomorrow? What to do now? Where to go? What choices to make?

I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed yourself thinking a million different things, branching out in all directions and possibilities without really voicing them. A second of time within the mind can mean such a vast amount of information whether you really notice that or not. So why did I decide to write what I did? I don’t really know. It was just an idea that suddenly presented itself so very clearly like a vast amount of random insight collecting into just one perfect train of thought. Maybe it’s been collecting for minutes or maybe hours, maybe years.

But I suddenly realised that what I needed was to think back, back as far as I could remember. When I was 3 or 4 years old, and starting from that time, start listing all the things that you liked doing and what just made you light up. Don’t wonder why, don’t question anything or analyse because none of that matters. Just list what you did, it doesn’t matter why you did it, because you never gave it a thought back then, so don’t bother thinking about it now either.

One of my earlier memories was that I liked writing music notes on paper, I like composing music. I also remember a particular flower and photographs of it I liked. I liked to come up with rhymes. I liked adventure and being in my own head, I also liked sharing my wild ideas with other people and you know something? They liked that too.

Keep listing all the things as you were growing up, all the way up until right now. Once you start listing it’s hard to stop and the strange thing is I couldn’t remember anything painful at all, it’s like none of the issues and problems that happened in between mattered, I was on a roll.

After you feel that you are done, look at all the things you just wrote. THAT IS YOU. All that combined is what makes you happy and there’s no reason not to do it tomorrow, or right now. You know it’s true because you wrote it, you might have even ran out of space, in fact after you thought you finished you might still come up with random stuff now. Did you suddenly remember that time when you drew something really cool? What about when you were so lost in thought after reading a book or you wanted to write a screen play for a movie. What about that time when you were a kid and you just walked up to somebody and said want to be friends? And you didn’t feel weird about it either, you didn’t care, you were just being you.

Well guess what, all that stuff you wrote is still you now. If you’ve ever wondered what’s happiness or what is self-esteem or where to go, or what to do, or what is your purpose or why to wake up in the morning. Especially when you were a kid, you never thought about any of that, you just woke up one day and decided to try and build something, or draw something, or you came up with a plan that would never work but you still did it. Why?

Because that’s just you.

Give it a go, you might find you too.