Once, while Gandhi’s train was pulling out of a station, a European reporter ran to his compartment window. “Do you have a message I can take back to my people?” he asked. It was Gandhi’s day of silence, a vital respite from his demanding speaking schedule, so he didn’t reply. Instead, he scrawled these words on a scrap of paper and passed it to the reporter: “my life is my message.”
Each individual life signifies something. Every act of living is a communication in that it expresses something. Our lives are stories, narratives that say something, that mean something. Through thoughts, feelings, actions and accomplishments we speak ourselves into being. We embody and express certain values and a certain way of being in the world.
Carl Jung wrote:
“The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me. Or, conversely, I myself am a question which is addressed to the world, and I must communicate my answer, for otherwise I am dependent upon the world’s answer.”
Consider:
If my life is a message, what message is it expressing?
If my life were a story what is the narrative? What are the main themes?
Is there an alternative message I would like my life to express? How I might I begin to communicate that?