The life that is meant to be yours and yours alone is out there, but it sure doesn’t care if you’re waiting around for it to come a-calling. It won’t. It’s not going to come looking for you like a parent after an itinerant child, to lead you by the hand and make you look left and look right and look left again as it guides you on your way.
You won’t find it in a book or on the television or on Google maps, and you certainly cannot buy it with money. It doesn’t have training wheels, a save point or a ctrl-z button. No one’s going to stop you in the street and hand it to you, or tell you where to find it. It’s not going to be in the same place every week, no matter how many times you go back there expecting it to be suddenly waiting to fulfill you.
It’s not a person, it’s not a place, it’s not a thing, it’s not a certificate, a diploma or a degree, it’s not even a single, blinding moment of elucidation. The life that is meant to be yours and yours alone is the sum total of every moment of every day of your living, breathing life.
This isn’t a practice run. If what you’re doing isn’t making you happy, stop doing it. If you don’t feel, at least once a day, a moment of oh god oh god what the hell am I doing? then you’re doing it wrong. If you don’t feel, at least once a day, oh my god how awesome is this!, then you’re doing it wrong.
You should be able to go to bed at night feeling like you earned it, like you owned it, in a way that has nothing to do with transaction. The life that is meant to be yours and yours alone is not waiting for you, and it’s certainly not hiding from you. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t still have to have the courage to go and find it, and love it, and live it well.