This afternoon, at the Mériadeck library, I stopped in front of the philosophy section. I had no specific book in mind, so I let chance decide for me. I reached out and grabbed a book: « What Are You Doing With Your Life? » by Krishnamurti. I flipped through it quickly, but before I could read even a single page, it was already time to leave.  
What do you make of your life? I could answer that I do. From my very first steps, I have never stopped doing. Doing to move forward, doing to endure, doing to prove. And when I am not doing, I hurry to do something else, as if stillness were a crime, as if being had to fade before doing. 

But that is not what the author is asking. The question is not about what I do in life, but rather what I do with my life.  

And at this point, my answer becomes unclear. I would like to say that I dream it, that I shape it, that every day I pursue a quest: the quest to succeed. Not to succeed in life, but to succeed in no longer failing to be. To manage to live without wavering. To embrace who I am, to stop losing myself in who I should be. What do I make of my life? I am drawing it, clumsily, imperfectly. It is a sketch with blurred outlines, with hesitant strokes, but it is mine. Slowly, I am learning to defy conventions, to break the invisible chains that hold me back.  

I know my answer is not satisfying; it does not even fill a single page. If the author wrote an entire book about it, I should probably read it next time, if only to better frame this question. I love existential questions; they remind me of my childhood, that time when everything was still to be taken, to be learned, in the hope of understanding. Back then, I had questions, and I searched for answers. Today, I have silenced the questions. I still have no answers, yet I have learned to live with certainties built on beliefs. What a contradiction… What a tragedy it is to grow up! If childhood knew, it would not ask so many questions to adults who, long ago, gave up on the magic of searching.  

Written by Aliane UMUTONIWASE