A friend of mine recommended I read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, and I’m going to make the same recommendation to you.
It’s a simple story with a deep and thoughtful message: you must find your own path to happiness. Only you can decide what will make your life fulfilling.
And you have no reason to not read it — it’s FREE via the Gutenberg Project. It’s also pretty short and can be read in one or two sittings.
Truth be told, I’m at a point in life where there are a million paths and I drift around between feeling lost and hopeful. This book was a great inspiration to focus on myself and let go of chasing the dreams of being like “other people” or trying to fulfill the expectations of others. Live for yourself. No excuses.
Slower, he walked along in his thoughts and asked himself: “But what is this, what you have sought to learn from teachings and from teachers, and what they, who have taught you much, were still unable to teach you?” And he found: “It was the self, the purpose and essence of which I sought to learn. It was the self, I wanted to free myself from, which I sought to overcome. But I was not able to overcome it, could only deceive it, could only flee from it, only hide from it. Truly, no thing in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this my very own self, this mystery of me being alive, of me being one and being separated and isolated from all others, of me being Siddhartha! And there is no thing in this world I know less about than about me, about Siddhartha!”
