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Do growing pains have anything to do with growth?  Find out what they really are and how to best help a child who wakes up at night crying because of “growing pains”

 

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(Only be Afraid of Standing Still: Practical lessons from the lives of Children pg. 131)

In researching for this piece, I found that people fall into one of three main categories:

A) Those who believe that life has no purpose (yeah right, even a tadpole serves a purpose)
B) The majority who are not sure whether life has any purpose
C) Those that have one conviction or the other about what life’s purpose is

Whatever category you find yourself, I say; it is a start and for now, it is good enough …  provided you are able to re-evaluate your position as you become more aware.

So, what is the purpose of life and how do you find yours?

The purpose of our lives is to develop to our maximum abilities in order to be able to enhance creation.

Why?

The experience of furthering creation brings the sensation we call “being happy.” A small part of this is what you feel when you are acknowledged to have made relevant and important contribution in your field of endeavor. This is why we strive for prizes and awards – whether in Hollywood, sports, industry, research or churches. Remember how you felt when you were commended for an important contribution?
Abdrushin puts it this way: “You men are on this earth to find happiness.”
But I suggest you not take this quote literally.

There is no place you could go and find packets of happiness lying around to be picked up. Not in Hollywood, not in Las Vegas.  Psychologists have also shown that education, youth, marriage, children, where you live or what you do, and wealth – beyond the essentials – cannot bring happiness either. At best, they bring temporary feelings of elation.

The quote is in the same sense as saying: “You are in school to find wisdom” or “In the gym to find fitness.” In either case, it is the process that counts. You and I know that there is no wisdom lying around in schools, or fitness in some locker in a gym. The exercises you have to do in the school and the gym, give you a chance at being wise or being fit as the case maybe. In either case, you have to make an effort.
In a similar vein, we may say: “You go through childhood to find maturity.” There is no maturity in childhood. You worked hard for it. The challenges of childhood forced you to use your innate abilities, in the process developing and maturing them. Your progress was slow and your perspectives changed along the way. Every time you attained a milestone, you reached a new level of maturity. But the true value of childhood is found in what kind of adult a person turns out to be.

The purpose of going to the gym is to be fit – beyond the gym. School prepares for beyond school, and childhood prepares one for adulthood. In each of these examples, the ultimate purpose of each activity lies beyond the activity itself.

Same thing applies to the life of adults!

The real purpose of being on earth lies beyond this earth. Everything else is transitional. We are however, meant to enjoy even the transitional phase. That is more within the scope of this book.

Our happiness in this world is linked to our activities. Not in what we do, but in how we do it. It does not matter whether you are a teacher or the janitor. What matters is how much value you bring to bear. With each accomplishment, we feel a transient sense of elation, just like the milestones of childhood.
For an activity to induce happiness (not just distraction) it has to have meaning, (able to make positive impact) be engaging (requiring attention, skill and creativity) and be achievable (holding the promise of accomplishment). Such activities would then challenge our inner capabilities, unfolding, refining and maturing them in the process. With this our inner lives change, changing our perspectives and perceptions; of what makes us happy. The feeling we call happiness is always there, all around us. We individually sense it to a greater or lesser degree depending on our perceptive capacities.

Our capacity for happiness is a function of our inner maturity, the maturity of our vital core. Our activities induce this maturity. The more mature we are, the easier it is for us to sense the finer vibrations we call “happy.” It is like two fruits, one green, the other ripe, hanging from the same tree and surrounded by the same humidity in the atmosphere. The mature ripe fruit attracts and absorbs more moisture than the immature green fruit, even though they are exposed to the same amount of humidity.
The more mature our vital core, the higher our capacity for happiness.

Happiness is a state of emotional well-being, just as fitness is a state physical well-being. It is the desired state of existence. It should be the norm. It is an inner state of peaceful anticipation that allows you to interact with the events in your life, in a pleasurable way. Happiness is not the absence of adversity, but the ability to maintain inner peace even in the face of adversity. It is like being physically fit. Physical fitness does not mean the absence of exertion; rather it means the ability to better cope with exertion.
We are on this earth to do those things that induce us to mature and …experience happiness!

So that we are clear. We are on this earth to find happiness. Happiness comes from the experiences of a mature inner self, our vital core. The small and large events in our lives impact us in a way that induces and aids our inner maturity. Therefore, this earth is like a school, the true significance of any event lies in what we can learn from it.

But the events in our lives are nowhere near as controlled as in a schoolyard. Individual circumstances vary from abject poverty, where millions of people lose the very lives we seek to improve, to decadent wealth where every wish becomes a deed. In between these extremes millions toil away in a muddle of hope and desperation.  Pain, ill health, family discord, difficult working conditions, fear of the past, anxiety for the future, are realities in many lives. For the average adult, life can be so difficult that talks of happiness may just seem to be for entertainment.

I am not some starry-eyed romanticist for life. I know hardship first hand. During the Nigerian Civil War of 1967- 70, our lives turned, very quickly from comfortable upper middle class circumstances to refugees. My father, who brought home all the money, was caught behind the enemy lines and we were not sure whether he was alive. My mother was left to fend for the rest of us. Our very existence depended on her ability to get out of bed before dawn, find her way through dark paths in thick tropical forest, make a clearing with the most primitive tools, plant tubers of yam, and somehow find a way to sustain us until the yams could be harvested.

She knew nothing about farming. She did not have the physical strength to do the work. She was afraid of the forest, with good reason. But she was determined to make a go of it. She did her best to maintain normalcy in our lives.

That was the easy part. Life was hard. Every day was a potential disaster. Dawn came with anxiety, dusk with fear. There was always the danger that a-bomb could go off and end our lives at anytime. It did. Many around us were killed or wounded. There were no hospitals, no laws; you were simply on your own. The desperate situation brought out the worst in people. Bullies ruled. You had no rights. Though I could not articulate it then, I could perceive the anxiety in the adults around me. “Good night” and “Good morning” were used as a verb, with emotions. Nobody could plan anything. Every meal was possibly the last. Several years of our family assets, were lost, in moments. The bank vaults were looted and documents destroyed.  We just lived from day to day, from moment to moment.

Many people reading this may find themselves in similar, worse or only slightly better situations. It is easy to think happiness is impossible in the face of all these challenges.

Is happiness still possible in such circumstances? The answer is yes.

Happiness is possible, no matter the circumstances you find yourself. The challenges of your present circumstances are your tools to happiness. All you have to do is to live with purpose.
If you are still wondering what your purpose is, then you first have to work at creating a purpose for yourself.

Stay tuned for the next excerpt: Why you need a purpose.