Finding Yourself Amongst the Untraveled Road

“You are only free when you realise you belong no place—you belong every place—no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.” Maya Angelou

I remember reading this for the first time and I immediately teared from the words. It was as if a sudden realisation of the hardships I had faced within my life, all were explained within a few elegant sentences.

I have often regarded myself as an Antevasin, those of you may remember its definition, as described within my past written post. It is my word, identity and description from now, until forevermore.

Yet, for those that do not know, an Antevasin is one that exists on the borders of society. Never one to find belonging within the cultures, trends and way of life that society so often propagates, with change very similar to the law of seasons. Yes, I mean that the way of life is never dictated by free will, rather one that is given to you by the will of others. Inconsistently so.

I have never found belonging even within my own culture from whence born and raised. And they say, life is already hard enough as it is, however, should you knowing all that, just try and fit in within the shallows of society, stay put and make do, or should you hold your ground and become your own anchor against the turbulent unknown of the untraveled roads ahead? Sounds rather romantically put, doesn’t it?

Osho regards courage as a ‘love affair with the unknown’ and for you to really find yourself, and who you truly are, you need to have the courage to do so, without any influence or obstacle that may wish to come between you and the untraveled road ahead. To find out who you really are, you need to love and declare ownership to whichever hand fate plays to you. To bear whatever is necessary, to love every step of that which you are about to venture and to of course, embrace it as your own. That is belonging. To mould the life in which you live beyond existence. Be it hardship, you take it without question and you bore a life worth living, to which you evolve out of it as a resilient entity, that has seen hell and perhaps been burned from the very flames itself. Awakened, because you could no longer live within the suffering that a mundane and melancholy life brings.

Belonging is never to cease control of your own life, code of living, ideology and fulfilment of the soul, just to fit in and have a life that is reasonably sensible. Don’t you see? That cost is far too high a sacrifice. This is where Angelou’s beautiful literature ties in so well here. At first, belonging must be acquainted with loneliness, because from loneliness we are introduced to who we really are. Society as a whole has long suppressed us and numbed our true nature. The longer you are enveloped in this false representation, the further you are from a home within yourself. The price of this realisation often brings on great spurs of pain (one which I like to call growing pains), for you realise that your whole life was never yours to date, so yes, the sorrow that you will face is of a high price. Yet the moment you proceed forward with this notion of pain, this in fact steers your awakening, and represents a beacon of growth in its own right. You will manifest your greatness through the wisdom of solitude, void and emptiness.

Yet alas, here is where you mirror truth and mimic the evolution of the great beyond and universal conspiracies that have brought you here today. You will notice I use this analogy simultaneously, however there is nothing truer than the words I will speak of now.

"Thus, you came to be within the universe. A shining light amongst solitary emptiness’.

Your existence is not one to be allocated and kept dormant. You bore from the core and divine miracle that is the universe. Once empty and null, now momentous and filled with life. You are that representation of that life. Life that exists in all corners of the earth, a name which is whispered across all corners of the universe. You belong to no place, for you are a constituent of every place. Your soul bears the message of time, one that will voice its consciousness, until the end of infinitum itself.

Fatima Elmusbahi