This past week I had the opportunity to try something new called the Lucia Light Experience. For those who are not familiar with this (which includes myself as I have a tendency to try things first learn later), I suppose one way to describe it is like hallucinating but without the use of substances. Scientifically though, it is a way to stimulate EEG brain wave patterns similar to those that are experienced during meditation.

A few minutes into the session, I began to think of what I should be seeing. I wasn’t seeing a lot other than flashing and changing colours. I began to think that the whole light show must have some type of desired visual design and I wanted to know if I was experiencing it properly. I thought to myself they must have a outline of this, ie. for the first five minutes the colours are soft or warm to invoke these types of feelings and you should be seeing this design. I wished they had given me an outline beforehand so I could anticipate what I should be experiencing and make myself experience it how it should be if I wasn’t.

In that moment I had an “ah-ha” moment. Rather than sitting back and enjoying the experience for what it was, I was focused on making sure my experience conformed to what should be. That I was drastically missing out on something if I didn’t have a guideline of how it was supposed to be experienced, and while I was worrying about this I was missing the whole experience. And for what? I couldn’t change the experience I was having, even if someone had told me what they had experienced in the same light show right before mine could that couldn’t really completely alter how I experienced it anyway.

This revelation shed a bit of light into my current situation. Without any clear goals in my life I was desperate to figure out how other people had shaped their lives; the choices they made and the feelings they had that made them do so. I thought, maybe, just maybe if I figured out how they discovered their goals and passions, and what made them want to get up in the morning, why they put up with certain things, so I could just copy what they did. I was looking for the outline for how to experience life when maybe I should just be enjoying my experience for what it is.

Revelations are easy to have, integrating them is the kicker. Even as I write this now, a huge part of me shies away from changing my behaviour of seeking to find someone whose life and choices I idolize and mimicking them. I like to be an efficient person, work smarter not harder is something I adhere to and being able to avoid life experiences that are more detrimental than beneficial just seems like the most efficient route. Using the metaphor of the fork in the road and having to choose one trail, there should be a Google maps app I can pull up and figure out the quickest trail to where I am supposed to be going! They say there is an app for everything, but I think I may have to accept that there is no life map app.

I try to envision myself letting go and letting what happen happen, but to me it just feels like giving up. I was raised with the attitude that if you are going to do something, do it right, work at it and become the best. Letting things happen without making them happen to me seems like I will miss out on opportunities as I am not actively working to make them happen. How do you know what the balance is between giving up when all you needed to do was keep trying a bit longer or the point where you are wasting your time and energy into beating a dead horse, trying to make a situation turn into something it will never be.

Lately I have been driving myself crazy trying to make things happen, when I’m not even sure what I’m trying to make happen or if it’s something I even want. Maybe I am so desperately focused on figuring out where I want to end up in life and how to get there, that I am missing out on discovering where I actually want to go in life.

“Not all those who wander are lost”