What Are We Really Seeking?

Unique Perspectives: What Are We Really Seeking?

By Kim Stevens

Here’s a quote I really dig from Joseph Campbell: “I don’t think [the meaning of life] is what we’re seeking. I think [it’s] an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”

Couldn’t you just live inside those words forever?

Beyond the beautiful sentiment, Campbell’s quote has practical applications in my life. Take “Unique Perspectives,” for instance. Every time I begin a new edition (and we’re on No. 14 for those counting), I feel so alive working on every part of it – from the process of taking my personal learnings and articulating them in a new way, to editing and finally sending these thoughts to receptive minds around the world.

It’s how I feel whenever I’m playing with a new idea or challenge, and it doesn’t matter whether there’s any sort of end goal in mind. The end goal for me is living. The finish line is the feeling, and it’s something I get to experience right here and now.

This concept explains why I travel, or at least it’s one of the things I love most about traveling; the adventure of the unknown keeps me on my toes. When I visit a foreign country, especially one I’ve never been to before where I can’t speak the language and don’t know my way around, suddenly, from this uncertainty springs forth the distinct feeling of being alive. Gone is the banal or uninspired, and in its place is only adventure, which is the experience I’ve been seeking all along.

Some might call it stepping out of your comfort zone or conquering a longstanding fear but however you label it, I relish living that way, not for the end goal or accomplishment, whatever that may be, but for – as Joseph Campbell would say – feeling the rapture of being alive.