Hello,
Here we go again for another chapter in this series that we started a few weeks ago.
I trust, or should I say hope, that you have enjoyed what we have covered so far from the adventurous story of Simba.
As usual, I will start with a flashback.
Flashback
In the previous chapter entitled “Your comfort zone is your enemy”, we have discussed how Simba’s biggest enemy wasn’t his uncle Scar but his own comfort zone.
Nothing else kept him away from the throne. Nothing prevented him from claiming what was rightfully his. Nothing else kept him living according to the “Hakunah Matata, it means no worry” cloud of illusion. His enemy, the comfort zone was more dangerous, vicious and efficient than Scar.
The Purpose of Life
Philosophers, writers, musicians and other artists have wondered about and discussed the purpose of life in the variety of their crafts.
You have perhaps also wondered about the purpose of life. Another word for that is “meaning of life”.
I distinctly remember the phase of my youth where I asked myself a lot of existential questions. Why did I have to be born? What is the point of existing. What is the meaning of life.
These are deep questions that each one of us, I can now assuredly affirm, have asked ourselves.
Having exposed Simba’s comfort zone as his most threatening enemy, I feel obligated to assess why Simba was OK to be comfortable.
The Hakuna matata lifestyle seems like an awesome philosophy at first. It’s a propaganda. A falsehood that we can go through life with no worries once the past is behind us.
It entices us to believe that it takes strength to put the past behind us. Perhaps it does, but it takes greater strength to face it.
The Hakunah matata lifestyle can only go for so long. At some point, Simba had to”wake up and smell the coffee”.
Simba was comfortable because he did not have a purpose. All that mattered to him was to roam about life and have as much as fun as possible as long as the memories of the past were constantly blown away by the turbulent winds of entertainment.
An imitation of happiness is a clear limitation of happiness. JP
Anybody who acts, lives in a pretence of happiness is living a life with self-imposed limits.
Substituting true happiness with a smiley face is the saddest reality.
Those who build walls of appearances to come across as strong are actually weaker than those who publicly tear because, in the words of Victor Frankl ,” tears bear witness that a man has the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”
It’s better to have the courage of suffering than the cowardliness of false happiness.
This is the reason why Simba was stuck in his comfort zone. He thought he was happy. He felt like a new world opened up to him and certainly a new world of illusion and la la land opened to him. He was without purpose.
And there was Nala…
Nala reminded Simba of his purpose. He was meant to be King. No matter how many miles away he ran from his past, he was bound to face it.
She wanted to do something about her reality. Not run away from it but face it. She ran to find help and she help she found indeed, disguised in the skin of a coward Lion, who by the appearance had every kingly attributes but with the feeble character of the lowest in food chain.
The encounter with Nala got Simba thinking. Is she right? Can I go back? I can’t go back.
Only at this point did he start questioning the comfort zone.
We need such people as Nala, or circumstances and events that will shake us up a little bit and cause us to reflect on where we stand in the race of life.
At that point, we question everything. The foundations upon which we have built a wall of insecurities, the truthiness of our belief systems, the possibility of a different outcome; Everything that can be shaken is shaken. In moments like these we start thinking about the purpose of life.
The Purpose in Life
If Simba’s encounter with Nala dealt a great blow and fissured the walls of Simba’s comfort zone, his encounter with Mufasa certainly caused every brick to shutter.
This encounter was not about the past. This encounter was not about things that He could not change. This encounter was not about his mistakes. This encounter was about his purpose in life.
The purpose of life is to find our purpose in life.
Simba’s purpose was now plain and clear.
Finding his purpose had an effect on him. It compelled him to come out of the comfort zone. It gave him a new breath and inspired him to become, in the words of Nala “The king I see inside”.
We often stay in our comfort zone because we lack a purpose. Once we understand that the purpose of life is for us to find our purpose in life, and once we have indeed found that purpose that Simon Sinek calls “our Why”, we can no longer enjoy the coziness of the comfort zone. We begin to hear a voice : the voice of the stretch zone where grows takes place.
In you find yourself stuck in your comfort zone, fearful to try anything that is estranged to you, seek deep inside for your purpose.
Living to fulfil your purpose is the greatest inner strength there his. Even the steel of the comfort zone melts before the flames of determination. The fire of a purpose sets everything ablaze.
I conclude this third part with this wonderfully inspired quote:
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
JP Notes 