I had sort of figured this out by age 9.

I felt caught in the trap of the game with no idea what I should do. I just trailed along uncomfortably through my teens and early 20s. Then I left for Japan at 25 and my life blossomed. “Oh-ho! So that was what I was supposed to be doing!?”

Here is a message from Alan Watts – early interpreter of Buddhism in the West – as suggested to me by my friend Tom Callos:

In our SKH Quest Center for Martial Arts, we have students practice a talking meditation in the 3rd week of every October addressing, “I really know I’m alive when I…” and fill in the blank as many times as possible in one minute.

For most, the exercise is way harder than it sounds.