Why are we born if only to suffer and die?

I just got something today that others have probably understood for much of their lives. I'm on to something. The fact that I'm 46 and just got it is both sad and joyous. Sad that it took so long and joyous to finally have it. It's new so it's still fleeting and I just forgot what it is so hold on while I go look for it again. You see, spoiler alert!, I'm a seeker. I keep searching for that thing that helps make sense of this craziness called life. Some existential Rosetta Stone that when discovered will open my eyes and decypher the secrets of it all. That "AHA!" of deeper understanding that will finally end the lifelong search. The search for the Emerald City at the end of the yellow brick road...or more fittingly the clicking of the ruby red slippers and the AHA! of "There's no place like home". "If you can't find happiness right here in your own backyard then you sure as hell won't find it wandering through hell and back"...to paraphrase from one of the best movies ever made even though I'm not gay in any way. But seriously, can you imagine Judy Garland spending the rest of her life in a black-and-white-Kansas tilling the dust bowl soil, living out her days making Jell-O salad for the endless family reunions? Sadly, I can too! Yet the sadness of being totally stuck in the middle of nowhere, USA, with no vision of what is beyond the horizon is the opposite side of the coin of being grounded in this lifetime with a sense of place and purpose that I seem to be missing. (Although I am partial to a desperate Dorothy singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"looking for that mysterious rainbow's end than the smug and perky girl back from a life changing journey telling us there's no place like home.)
And that is what I'm talking about here...the thing I started to blog about in the first place. What I'm starting to understand more about myself is that I'm getting tired of always flip-flopping back and forth between opposite poles of an experience. Desire and fulfillment. Yearning and contentment. Hunger and satiety. Happy and sad. A penny is neither heads nor tails...it's a penny with both heads and tails. I'm realizing that there are not two opposite coins in my pocket...one of pure emptiness and one of pure fullness, but one coin with its opposite sides. One experience of being that can be seen from either side at the same time. When I'm truly happy where is my sadness. When I'm sad where did my happiness go? It's not like I can't see the deep horrors of the world when I'm sitting on top of it! The horrors are right there and I can even feel them on the other side of the coin in my happiest times if I try. I'm finally just owning up to the fact that all of my experiences and all of my searches are just the internal machinations of my hamster wheel of a brain running as fast as it can. Searching for some final answer to my questions is just a desire for the hamster to slow the hell down. I don't actually want to stop asking questions and searching but it would be nice not to expect an answer.
Otherwise put, I'm just getting the depth of bumper sticker philosophy 101: Wherever you go there you are. And I'm getting that there is both sadness and joy in that fact. How sad it is that I will never really escape this guy, James, and see the world with totally new eyes and thoughts and a freshness that layers of curmudgeonly crust seem to filter out. Oh, to see without the lifetime of cultural judgements and parental neuroses and educational blinders and fears and mistrusts developed over a lifetime of imagined monsters in dark places and real monsters in the light.
And yet, what a joy to be able to breathe this air and feel the snow or rain come down only as James can do it. A witness like no other on this planet who is his own distinct piece of God or Gaea or the Universal energy that drives the whole thing. I love Mike Meyers and even if his last movie was crap I like the message that we are all our own guru's...or...G.U.R.U (GEE, YOU ARE YOU). That is so damn stupid but I had to fit it into this blog somehow and I've managed to do it so HAH! Again, I'm only now just understanding the non-duality of experiencing the opposite sides of the same coin at the same time. Being stuck and unable to escape myself...and the freedom of being myself and experiencing it fully as only I can.
What the #*&%# am I talking about? I'm talking about a grown man who is finding deep meaning in cheesy platitudes. I get it! The journey in life is the destination! While I'm contented I am still looking for contentedness. The closer I get to finding IT the harder I'm going to have to search for it. There is no answer out there, yet I'm going to find a lot of joy in searching for it anyway. In this lifetime there will not be an "AHA! I have achieved total contentedness" moment. Yet in that knowledge I have a sense of contentment that has eluded me. It's not like a lost sock where you finally give up looking for it in the dryer for the 40th time and decide to just go out and buy another one. It's more like I'm gonna keep searching as it is the search that brings me joy. The ache of desire and the amazing discoveries that are all part of it. My cycle trip across SE Asia is a perfect metaphor...did it even really happen?! I rode and rode almost every day looking for "it" and never discovered "it". But my god the search was incredible. And new sights both inner and outer filled me with an aching joy. I was alive. Only now do I realize that I never came back from that trip to where I was before...and in a way I never left. I'm just James who looked then for the same things I've always looked for but in a much more exciting and aerobic way... the answers to the questions with no answers.