What are you looking for?

We all search. I, too, was born without a predetermined path, without a purpose laid out before me. Until I found my reason, I wandered through life, trying to determine what I was good at or simply searching. As Nietzsche said, "He who has a why to live can bear almost any how." This quote resonated with me during my own journey of self-discovery.

The fortune of discovering a path that never ceases to ascend ignites your spirit and grants you access to the rhythm of life. Regardless of the circumstances, you yearn to find something that liberates your mind, that allows you to simply exist. The sensation of riding a wave, the pursuit of perfect equilibrium until thought ceases, dedicating all your energy to that precise moment. As Thoreau once mused, 'I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.'

We first embark on family mandates, accompanied by recipes for success, something like "the steps to follow to become like X." These formulas for success or misfortune that we inherit give us a vision. Still, they often need to be updated and fall into disuse. So, we return to the path, intensely searching for something that keeps us afloat, entertains us, and makes us happy. Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us, "Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

When we talk about searching, we refer to the attempt to find that which makes us happy, that which meets the norm. 'If you work at something you would do for pleasure and without being paid a cent, you don't work a single day more in your life.' However, we keep making the same mistakes. We accept participating in activities in exchange for something as futile and superficial as money, as if the time we give has no value as if it could be paid with something soulless. But of course, living in society demands that we acquire the means to 'pay' for our place and the needs we will have. Henry Ford's words, 'Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.'

Walking the halls of this life has a risk: if we don't find something that fills us, attracts us, and takes all our attention, we will pay attention to everything around us over which we have no influence. If we fall into this trap, where many stay to live, we will have been part of a self-imposed fraud in which we confuse comfort with happiness and homeostasis with success. That's why defining a purpose and ensuring it becomes the end we want to reach is essential. As Viktor Frankl stated, "Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose."

As the original monkeys, we use all our mirror neurons to replicate what other monkeys do. If we see them happy, we imitate them, hoping they will happen to us. But the trap is there, in the path we take to reach the 'pond'-a metaphor for our goals and aspirations-expecting that the goal of others can be equally attractive to us. Although it can become a path, it won't be ours until we truly accept it as destiny and internalize that we are joining someone else's path that, at most, will bring us as much joy as the one who took it for themselves. In the words of Oscar Wilde, 'Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.'

One of the many risks of the search is that we can get lost. We can stray from the path to the point of losing ourselves. We can get lost and set aside what we should have been because it is easier to let others guide us, even when they don't know where we want to go. As Steve Jobs said, "Your time is limited; don't waste it living someone else's life."

We will follow a path lined with prophets, with voices tempting us from the sidewalks, inviting us to compromise our desires in exchange for a false sense of security, which in the future will turn into regrets, into old-age longings for the things we never really did. As Ana?s Nin warned, "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." This quote reminds us of the importance of staying true to our desires and not succumbing to societal pressures.

It is vitally important to understand that the secret is not hidden in the search but in the endless sequence of moments that must be lived to interpret this existence as a life.

No one can tell you how to live life; no one knows the conversations in your mind among all those people you are.

'Today' holds immeasurable significance. It is the realm where events unfold, the arena where you assess each moment to stack it on one side of the scale.

The sensations with which you build each step, the musical notes with which you decide each turn you take in your life, and the color with which you paint your path will determine whether your search will fill you with wisdom or simply be another follower.

Your journey is exclusively yours, not a replica of someone else's. Your decisions are what will shape it, and your happiness, the fruit of your actions, and the consequence of them. Some may venture out to explore the Universe and will leave behind imprints that might entice others to tread the same path, but let's not be mistaken. Your footsteps are uniquely yours. No one will be able to traverse them in the same manner, expecting to arrive at the same destination you did.

Searching is traveling, one of those events that only sometimes needs to happen outside your mind. Knowing more allows us to open our eyes wide at each advance, with each new feeling, with hope focused on affirming that our search has ended and that we can live on the path, knowing that it is no longer necessary to continue in that ongoing question.

Some will stop searching, lower their arms, and join that "herd" that prefers to stop feeling the pain proposed by the path at each wrong turn, at each hope placed in a closed street. But many of us will keep searching all our lives, perhaps distrustful, trying to find something even better, but knowing that even when it hurts, opening paths is what we dedicate ourselves to.

Finally, remember Anthony Bourdain's words: "Your body is not a temple; it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride."

Author: Fabian Mesaglio