Answering Other's Questions About Oneself Do all people practicing Buddhism have difficulty answering questions like these:

What gives your life meaning?

What do you like about yourself?


Somebody asked me these questions, and I am having a difficult time answering them. I don't know if it's just me and my circumstances, or if it is my Buddhist practice that keeps me from verbalizing the answer.

In Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Shunyru Suzuki Roshi says a Buddhist should stay away from excitement which I agree with and try to follow. If I knew I wouldn't wake up tomorrow morning, I don't think I would be particularly upset. Is this a normal feeling Buddhists have or come to after they have been practicing?
tl;dr: I think it is normal, you just need time to get used to it. It will pass. I think it will be useful for you to investigate, why do you feel the desire to be "normal"? What part of you feels insecure?

I can only offer my anecdotal support - yes, I've felt like this too. 

At one point I couldn't even fill out the "About me" section of my social media profile, or a form for a retreat that asked me to describe myself. I mean, what do I put there? I couldn't really define myself by my samsaric interests of the past, and I didn't identify as a Buddhist or some other "ist" either because it's my present vehicle to the truth, it is not me. 

Then I began to wonder if my friends will consider me weird. And I also realized it didn't matter much to me what anyone thought.

It took me a while to accept totally that this identity-less person is who I am, and I am fine with it. What helped me was to listen to several interviews of spiritually awakening people on batgap.com - after hearing several hundred interviews I had the confidence that this is quite okay. I was not very different from the people being interviewed in my mind state and experiences, and they all seemed pretty together in their external identities after a few years of being lost, so I felt okay.

These days if someone asks me who I am, I don't have the deer in the headlights look - instead I try to imagine what the person wants to hear, and reveal that aspect of my externally visible identity, even though internally I have none.

And yes, being okay with dying is pretty normal at this stage of acceptance.