On a deeper level, I think every Human being has a need to be useful, a need to do more with life than just being secure, having enough money, feeding your family.

We need more than that. We need to contribute to something that is beautiful to us, that we care about for real.

Certainly on one level, if you are just a cog in the machine, replaceable by someone else, you are going to feel not needed.

But I think even more than that, you might be doing something irreplaceable to your company.

But still if your company is not doing something that fills your life with meaning, that makes you say, ‘Yeah, I am doing what I was put on this Earth to do,’ then you are still not going to feel fulfilled.

If what you are doing is something that is very humble, if it is part of a cause that you believe in, and if you can see that what you are doing is necessary for the Earth, then you will feel good about what you are doing.

The key is not necessarily in finding work that is challenging where no one else could replace you. It is really more about where do I put my life energy?

My lifetime is a gift. My life is a gift. What am I going to do with this?

When I have the suspicion that I am not doing what this gift is for, then I am going to have unease, and a yearning that pushes me all the time with restlessness to find what is it that I am here to do.

There is this fear if I give generously, what about me, what is going to be left for me, who is going to take care of me because we do not see a World where the giver is taken care of too.

So therefore we want to be financially independent, we want to not need anyone’s gifts.

We want to be able to pay for everything and that leaves us alone. This paradise of financial independence means that you don’t need anybody and they don’t really need you either.

Now actually that is an illusion. Actually you are still dependent on people, on the sun, on the water, on the soil. You are still actually in total dependency.

It is just dependency on strangers, dependency on distant beings that you are not in any other kind of relationship with. That is where our civilization has taken us and we are pretty lonely here.

For the lonely person in this culture who is not lonely because they do not have friends, begin to orient towards the perception of gift meaning to see your life as a gift.

To see your purpose as being to give, to understand that you have to receive in order to continue giving, and to evaluate situations like what am I meant to give in this situation and what am I meant to receive?

If you can get in touch, and this is not a to-do, it is an invitation, a suggestion, maybe even listening to this, you will receive that gift.

Which is that I am a beautiful being that has been generously been gifted life and breath and sun and love and a body.

I did not earn this but here I am. And I know why I am here. I know that I yearn to contribute to a beautiful World.

When you are in the gift, you will no longer feel lonely and deep connections will grow with other people as a result of this orientation toward gift.