A Quest

Go Find Yourself

The only certainty in life is not death, as they say; it's that there are many perhapses and many maybes. In each perhaps hides a new beginning. In each maybe lies a precious treasure. In our hectic, goal-driven rush to either survive or surpass others, we frequently storm past unique encounters with life's delights. In this post, I hope to stir your curiosity for what's in your perhapses and maybes and in looking for them, on your way to your goals, find yourself.

What Or Who Is Out There?

I'm not saying that we're not supposed to have life goals. It's good to have goals, otherwise we just meander through life. I'm saying that the state you are in when you reach the goal, depends on how you journeyed to get there while not losing yourself, or others in the process. I want to suggest that it doesn't matter what your goal is.

The issue is that as you journey to it; you search, learn, grow, and discover something about yourself you did not know. Now, this is not for everybody, but perhaps it's the emergence of a different side of you; a stronger you; one who feels like you're the only one that discovered something awe-inspiring and wonderful. Aren’t you even slightly curious to see what or who you might encounter along your quest? So how do we begin this discovery? How do we notice what's waiting to be found?

The Quest

The thing about quests is that they are not only for storybook or movie heroes, and they don't announce themselves or call you with trumpets and fanfare. They whisper. They nudge. They show up as curiosities in ordinary moments. Most of us refuse the call without even knowing we've refused it. Or we hear and decide that it’s easier to stay where we are. Or we're too focused on the distant peak to notice the trailhead right at our feet.

But what if the journey is where you meet yourself? Not the you that you think you should be, nor the you that reaches some predetermined destination, but the you that emerges when you pay attention to what's directly in front of you right now. The journey to your goals is not an unknown void. It’s a place filled with maybes and perhapses and handy abilities to use as you go. To navigate this journey of self-discovery, you already possess everything you need.

Abilities for Discovering Who You Are

On this road, you carry certain abilities, though perhaps you’ve never recognized them. They aren’t the usual instruments of achievement or efficiency; they are our abilities of attention and curiosity. Used differently, they reveal not how to achieve more, but how to find more of yourself.

1: Your Wonder-Spotting Ability

Your eyes do more than help you reach targets. They can teach you how to notice. Narrowing your focus brings the world closer; widening it lets you see the bigger pattern. Try shifting between both. Look intently at one small detail — the vein of a leaf, the crack in a wall, the expression on a stranger's face that mirrors something you've felt but never named.

This is about training yourself to focus intensely, not on targets, but on discoveries. What happens when you focus your full attention on something small? A conversation you'd normally rush through. A task you usually automate. A feeling you typically suppress.

As you build this ability, you discover that life isn’t just about the big destination ahead, but about the secret treasure right there: you.

2: Your Present-Self Discovery Ability

We often connect the present with a distant goal, sacrificing today for tomorrow. But perhaps there’s another way to hold time. Imagine not just the future you’re working toward, but the future that may surprise you. Maybe today’s small choice — to pause, to listen, to dare — links to a tomorrow you could not have planned. This temporal connection is not just about delayed reward. It’s about seeing your present self as already in conversation with the person you’re becoming.

This ability is about asking: "What am I learning about myself right now?" Not "How will this make me better later?" but "What does this moment reveal about who I am?" When you cross the threshold out of your comfort zone, you don't do it to become someone else. You do it to meet the parts of yourself you didn't know were there.

Some more seasoned travellers have taken many such journeys and learned about themselves along the way. Yet even so, can you sit with discomfort and notice what it teaches you about your limits? Can you experience joy and let it show you what matters to you? Can you face a test or an adversary and discover resources within yourself you'd forgotten, or never knew existed?

This is the difference between living for a goal and living for discovery. One asks, "What will this get me?" The other asks, "What will this show me?"

3: Your Hinderance-Dealing Ability

Life’s hammers strike us often when we least expect them. Most advice says to push through, to visualize triumph, to overcome. But what if each hinderance is not merely a barrier, but a teacher? A mirror that reveals resilience, tenderness, or creativity you didn’t know you had.

Hinderances aren't just external. They're also internal. Your fears. Your doubts. Your resistance. Your impatience. The parts of yourself you'd rather not acknowledge, or you try to deny or hide tough times you are going through.

Your hinderance-dealing ability is not about planning around problems while staying motivated, but about leaning into them with curiosity. It’s not bulldozing; it’s about wondering what is this teaching you. It's about recognizing that hinderances are where you grow, where you discover capacities, you didn't know that you possessed.

Our biggest test isn't about winning or succeeding. It's about facing yourself fully, and emerging changed. What are you avoiding? What makes you uncomfortable? What challenges keep appearing in different forms? These aren't hinderances to your quest. These are your quests.

Whether you’re setting out for the first time or beginning again after many roads, the quest keeps reshaping you. At twenty, discovery might mean daring to start. At sixty, it might mean daring to change. Each encounter — each maybe — is an invitation to meet yourself anew. The path never stops giving you back to yourself.

The Magic of Maybes and Perhapses

The typical hero’s quest story is often told as an epic of dragons and battles, friends and foes, crossing thresholds, times of silence and ordeals, and finally returning with some elixir, a magical sword, or solutions to some crisis.

However, I want to suggest that in its truest form, a quest is quieter, more personal. It is the story of becoming. It’s where you leave behind the comfort of “I already know who I am.” Your quest may lead you to discover the sides of yourself that help, hinder, or surprise.

Or it’s the place where the hammer strikes. Something breaks. But in the breaking, something new is revealed. It’s when you come back from the quest not with trophies, but with a self you had not known before.

You may come to a place where there is no one else to tell you what to do; to a place of uncertainty.

What if, instead of demanding certainty, you embraced maybe? Maybe you will discover patience in the waiting. Maybe you will find courage not in slaying dragons but in sitting with fear. Maybe you will stumble upon joy where you least expected it. Maybe the path is not leading you away from yourself but deeper into yourself.

Certainty is brittle. It shatters when life’s hammer comes down. But maybe is supple. It bends, reshapes, and carries you forward into your perhapses.

A Quest Only You Can Take

No one else can take this quest for you. But life, with all its beauty and brutality, its hammers and its wonders, is waiting for you to walk it.

And when life's hammers fall, as they inevitably will, you will know there are no guarantees; that you know storms still lie ahead. Whatever you find on your journey—whether it’s a softer voice inside, a spark of creativity, an unbreakable thread of resilience—will not make the hammers vanish but give you a strength they cannot destroy.

This is not a sermon, not a set of instructions. It is a gentle tap on your shoulder. A reminder that there are still treasures hidden in the folds of your everyday.

And perhaps that is the point.

Not that we escape life’s blows, but that we keep discovering who we are, even as the hammers fall.

May you go, then, into your maybes.

May you wander into your perhapses.

And may you return — not with answers, but with wonder.