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anita.
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June 8, 2025 at 10:39 am #446660
anitaParticipant???
June 9, 2025 at 10:50 am #446682
PeterParticipantLife Worth Living – what is it like?
My spidy senses go off when I come across such topics. My history with such topic suggesting it will fall into the trap of measurement, labeling, comparison, if only’s, fears, discontentment – life a problem to be solved vice lived as it is.
Life being something my ego wants to fix. Anything but a seeing Life as it is and letting life be life. Which probably points to a answer.The wisdom traditions all point to the need to re-frame the topic.
– Can I look at life without the filter of what it should be?
– What does it mean to live with awareness?
– How can I be fully present in my life?
– What is arising in me when I feel my life lacks meaning?
– What does wholeness feel like, right now?All good questions but let’s be honest exhausting.
Then the ever helpful, unhelpful – A life worth living is one in which the individual becomes who they truly are – and who the heck is that.
Should the topic be addressed under the noble truths – life is suffering…We nod knowingly yes that is a truth… but we don’t like that, and not liking that a reason we suffer, a self creating loop of suffering…Even when we come to terms with such questions and advice, something happens and were right back to – is Life worth living or more honestly; I’m lonely and unhappy, and life should not be lonely, life should not hurt so much. Life should conform to my will…
Seems I landed were I started.
What would a life look like that was worth living?
One where it never occurred to me to ask such a question?What might happen when we stop trying to make life worth living, and simply let life live through us?
Or put in a way I’ve asked myself before: What if I lived what I say I believe and practiceJune 9, 2025 at 2:00 pm #446686
AlessaParticipantHi Everyone
I feel like this answer could be different for everyone. What gives life meaning? Very personal. It could be looked at from surviving to thriving. What is thriving? Overcoming obstacles, living with a sense of happiness. I guess, how I cope with difficulties nowadays is to see them as challenges to overcome. Even giving up is just part of a cycle for me now. No judgement. Must be exhausted and need to rest before I try again.
Personally, I’m happy with the way things are in my life even though it’s not easy. I’ve been in stages where I felt depressed, hated my life and hated who I was, so I changed it and myself. Made a life for myself. I do feel like life has chapters like a story. If my life was at any point not worth living I wouldn’t be here today. Sometimes suffering is necessary. If I didn’t go through a lot of hardship my son wouldn’t exist. Looking at the patterns in my story helps me to appreciate how it weaves together. I don’t know what exactly is coming next but I can be thankful for the lessons that my life has taught me and when difficulties occur I have the mindset of I wonder what the lesson will be?
I do believe that we are all inherently worthy. I find it easier to think of people as animals. No one has crazy expectations of animals. You just expect the animal to be an animal. I feel like expectations are half the battle.
Peter is right. I think life is just a journey and we are along for the ride whether we like it or not. Of course, it is important to take care of ourselves.
I don’t feel like there is a right answer. There is only your answer.
What do you think Anita?
June 9, 2025 at 6:01 pm #446696anitaParticipantDear Peter and Alessa:
Peter, thank you for honoring my thread with your presence—I genuinely appreciate it. If it took starting a silly thread just to hear from you 11 days after your last post, then I’d say it was completely worth it! Happy to have you here.
I agree that framing life as something to “fix” often leads to frustration, measurement, and unnecessary suffering, and I agree with your point about letting life be life, rather than constantly trying to shape it to our expectations.
Alessa: thank you as well! I really appreciate your perspective. Life is indeed personal, shaped by our experiences, struggles, and transformations. I love how you frame challenges as cycles, where even moments of “giving up” are simply pauses for rest before trying again. Your point about expectations creating unnecessary pressure is a powerful reminder to embrace life as it is rather than force it to fit an ideal. I agree—there’s no single “right answer,” only the one that speaks to each of us.
As to my own answer to the question “Life Worth Living- what is it like?”-
It’s like.. just feeing my feelings, giving my emotions SPACE in which they can breathe. Whatever the emotion is- to not be scared of it. To not push it down or away from my awareness ASAP. it’s about allowing my half a century suppressed emotions to express themselves. I am my emotions. I alienated myself from me (from my emotions) for way too long.
Summarized, life Worth Living is a life where emotions are allowed to breathe.
Anita
June 10, 2025 at 8:17 am #446711PeterParticipantHi Anita and Alessa
I has been a while, busy at work and I noticed I was repeating myself.
Feels like were saying the same thing – Life worth living is one were we breathe, and breathing don’t get wrapped up in our measures – constructs.
A thought occurred to me while addressing the topic. It struck me that most self-help and self-care practices are heavily centered on the first half of life: achievement and identity, on becoming more efficient, confident, and successful, managing and repairing the past. And that these self care notions don’t prepare us well for passing the baton to the second half. Failing to prepare us for the inward journey where the focus shifts from building the self to releasing it, from striving to surrendering, from doing to being.
The image that came to mind was of a river carving its way though rock and ambition meeting the estuary, the river meeting the tide of the sea where the waters churn and identities blur. The turbulence a sacred dance of transformation, river surrendering to the ocean, remembering it was always water.
Perhaps Anita you could turn the image into a poem.
June 10, 2025 at 9:10 am #446716anitaParticipant😊 The River’s Release:
For years, I tumbled in the rushing stream, caught and carried, lost in dream.
Chasing worth, chasing name, always falling, never claimed.I bent to tides that weren’t my own, seeking voices, praise unknown.
Shaped by hands that could not stay, fading echoes washed away.But near the edge, the pulse grows light, ambition whispers its last fight.
No need to carve, no need to prove— the ocean waits; the river moves.No one watching, no one measuring, no numbers left, no reckoning.
Just waves that fold, a sky so wide— nothing to chase, nothing to hide.And finally, I cease to strive, not fading out, but more alive.
No script, no weight, no restless spree— just water, vast and free.🌊🏞️ Anita
June 10, 2025 at 10:24 am #446717PeterParticipantNice 🙂
I like the line “ocean waits; the river moves” not as separated happenings but existing together in the same now.June 10, 2025 at 10:33 am #446718anitaParticipantIn the Same Now. Thank you, Peter!
June 10, 2025 at 10:45 am #446719anitaParticipantI want to address my anger this late Tuesday morning, June 10, 2025.
There’s plenty of it, suppressed, and it needs to be expressed, to be given the space to be, to breathe.
Anger is not to something to eliminate, as if it was a bad thing. (It can’t be done).
It is something to befriend.
Anger gets a lot of bad rap because of the destructive things too many people do when angry.
But anger in itself is a good emotion, in that its motivation to protect from abuse of all kinds.
Anger burned within me for so very long, suppressed, and the result- damage within and damage without.
It has to be expressed. I want to express it more, in a way, or ways that are not harmful to others!
So, here goes anger: (.. nothing).
Anger, my anger, is not used to be invited-to-express.
Anger has no words, actually. It’s a burning FIRE.
So, words will do it injustice.
I am feeling it, this fire within.
I am not judging it now- neither as Good nor as Bad.
It just is.
I let it be. I let it breathe.
Anita
June 10, 2025 at 1:21 pm #446721AlessaParticipantHi Everyone
For sure, different ways of expressing the same thing. ❤️
I was wondering if either of you wanted to share any thoughts on the later half of life?
What a beautiful poem, as usual! ❤️
It must have been difficult Anita with your feelings being suppressed for so long. It is not always easy doing the work to express yourself either. I’m glad that you are in a place where you feel comfortable with expressing yourself! I remember when I was working on letting my feelings out and it felt overwhelming and like it would never end. But eventually, things became less of a torrent and more of a wave, coming and going. I don’t know if this resonates with you at all?
June 10, 2025 at 8:15 pm #446726anitaParticipantDear Alessa and Everyone:
Thank you, Alessa ❤️
“thoughts on the later half of life?”- physical aging becomes more progressive and more visible on the later part of life. This is the only reality that applies to everyone, no exceptions.
” I remember when I was working on letting my feelings out and it felt overwhelming and like it would never end… I don’t know if this resonates with you at all?”- I don’t think it resonates with me. What felt overwhelming for me was keeping my emotions suppressed. On the rare occasions that I did express myself, it felt magically refreshing 🌿🚀🌍🎈💫, not at all overwhelming.
Anita
June 10, 2025 at 10:00 pm #446731anitaParticipantStrange, Strangely Strange.
Almost dark, almost quiet.
Listening to music I listened to last when I was a teenager.
Fast Forward, so many years lost in waiting for the “right” circumstances to start living-
Circumstances that never came to be.
I wish I stopped waiting long, long ago.
A life put on hold for too long.
I am more alive now than ever since life stopped for me.
It’s amazing, how life can stall for so may, many years, and a girl looks in the mirror and sees an old woman.
Almost 10 pm, almost dark; almost old, but .. not really. More Young than Ever.
10 pmAnita
June 11, 2025 at 2:08 am #446735AlessaParticipantHi Anita
That’s really interesting. I found the pain from the trauma really overwhelming. That is largely why I suppressed my emotions. Expressing that pain was not an easy process for me. I was taught by a therapist to connect to it deeply as if I was experiencing it for the first time. It was a case of suppressing all feelings to suppress the pain of the trauma for me. If I let myself feel, the pain of the trauma would come out.
I’m curious as to why you suppressed your emotions for so long if it felt good to express them? You don’t have to answer though, I know it is a very personal thing. ❤️
I’m glad that you’re finally alive and free to be Anita!
June 11, 2025 at 7:41 am #446739PeterParticipantHi Everyone
“thoughts on the later half of life:”
Jung once said it takes a healthy ego to let the ego go, a truth I’ve come to embrace. I see letting go as the work of life’s second half.
Like the Hindu notion of Vanaprastha, once a literal retreat into the forest—it now symbolizes a journey into the inner forest, a conscious turning inward that rest in the heart chakra. A time when one begins to relinquish control, status, and possessions, and instead seeks wisdom, contemplation, and spiritual depth.
On my path, I began noticing a tension between duality (the river) and non-duality (the ocean), and with it, the assumption that such an experience must be one or the other. Perhaps, in hindsight, this assumption revealing a desire to escape life (suffering).
It was through ballroom dancing that I encountered stillness within movement, a paradox that began to shift my perspective. Over time I suspected that duality and non-duality (subject, object, particle wave) aren’t opposites to choose between, but partners in a quiet dance. Not two sides of a coin, but the coin itself. A coin that no matter how you divide it, all are always present.
And so, as the second half of life dawns the realization: the paradox isn’t something to resolve, but something to hold. Paradox softening into integration. It’s here, in this stillness, that ego loosens its grip, not in rejection, but in reverence. The experiences of life, deeply felt and lived, resting quietly in the heart, no longer seeking to be understood, only held.
June 11, 2025 at 8:47 am #446740anitaParticipantDear Alessa and Everyone:
Alessa, you shared that you suppressed emotions to avoid feeling trauma; when you expressed emotions, you faced intense pain at first.
I shared that I suppressed emotions despite feeling good when expressing them; it was the suppression itself that was overwhelming, rather than the emotional release.
I should clarify that a few weeks ago, I brought fear into my awareness, and it was so overwhelming that I am not motivated to experience it again. The emotional release I have felt in the past—and still feel—comes from expressing other emotions, as well as fear, but only in very small amounts.
“I’m curious as to why you suppressed your emotions for so long if it felt good to express them?”- There was no one to express my emotions to—my isolation was severe. Of course, I couldn’t express them to my mother, but there was no one else, either. She isolated me, deeply distrustful of everyone (consistent with her Paranoid Personality Disorder), and instilled that same distrust in me. I learned to see everyone—cousins, neighbors, uncles, aunts—as unsafe. Any expression to people she knew came with guilt, making me feel as if I were betraying her.
So, there was truly no one to express myself to.
And then, I had tics from Tourette’s that made me hesitant to approach people, fearing rejection. Maybe my peers kept their distance because of the tics—or perhaps because they sensed my distrust and anxiety.
Nonetheless, I remember moments of exploding with joy—laughing bursts when I was a teenager. Those moments were wonderful. And the first time I truly expressed my thoughts and emotions was in college. It was to a woman who worked as a financial advisor at the college. That was a First.
Did I answer your question, Alessa? I also want to say that I appreciate your sensitivity in the way you ask me questions. ❤️
Anita
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