Our Journey - by James Hollis

Art by Deborah Koff-Chapin, The Center for Touch Drawing

Even when surrounded by many others, your journey is solitary, for the life you are to choose is your life, not someone else's. Alone, we nonetheless move amid a community of other solitudes; alone, our world is peopled with many companions, both within and without. Thus, this paradox stands before each of us, and challenges: We

must be alone if [we] are to find out what it is that supports [us] when we can no longer support [ourselves]. Only this experience can give [us] an indestructible foundation. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy

Finding what supports you from within will link you to transcendence, reframe the perspectives received from your history, and provide the agenda of growth, purpose, and meaning that we all are meant to carry into the world and to share with others. The soul asks each of us that we live a larger life. Each day this summons is renewed

and leaves you, unspeakably, to sort out
your life, with its fearsome immensities,
so that, now boundaried, now limitless,
it transforms itself as stone in you and star.
Rilke, "Evening"

--- James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life