@Ahhhhhz,
Ahhhhhz;71425 wrote:I've been rehearsing this introspective exercise lately. Wondering how people here might compile their own personal list.
"
Rehearsing" might not have been the best word. "
Re-contemplating" would have been better. It is a question I have
revisted quite a bit since it was first posed to me by someone awhile back. At first, I thought of the standard handful of responses...but they seemed woefully incomplete. So, I started mistrusting my standard perspective and changed it--like Robin Williams did for the students in Dead Poets' Society. I imagined being in jail, in solitary confinement, with no window, and little or no light. What would I sorely miss from my life? The list of things fairly poured out... something like this: Beauty, sensuality, freedom, learning, teaching, communicating, humor, relationships, intimacy, understanding, love, serenity, mystery, challenge, adventure, discovery, epiphany, creativity, mastery, competence, inspiration, aesthetic appreciation, hope, excitement, accomplishment, wonder, awe.
THEN, it came to me why, in the past few years, I had so frequently felt that my life was missing meaning and purpose: I had not indulged much in so many of these things that--in imagining a nearly total state of deprivation--I clearly needed... to be fulfilled with meaning and purpose.
Thank you all for your responses.