I have what I call ‘lost years’ where I know that I should have been doing something else but each day merged into the next and before I knew it years had gone by and I had nearly forgotten the dreams that were once so precious. Many days go past where you say to yourself ‘I am going to do such and such’ but you never quite get around to it. It was so easy then I hardly had to think about it at all. Well now I am getting around to it at last. So many years of staying on the path of a steady job and a mortgage defering the time when life would be lived. Keeping up the payments going in everyday living to work rather than working to live -life not really my own. Accumulating remote controls, getting fat on rich food, unhealthy, sleepy, and consuming rather than creating. Comfortably numb. It wasn’t really success or complete failure just a sort of compromise with existence and that really wasn’t good enough.
So I have woken up and consciously jumped off that path, some would say recklessly, into the wild wood and now every single day is a new exciting adventure and even a struggle for survival. Sure, I worry sometimes about whether I might earn enough money to cover the rent and be able to eat good food but the excitement and the edge are back. Somehow I get through the month but I need to be fully awake because there is no safety net if I fail and not much of a Plan B to talk about. I probably work twice as hard now but it’s my choice and I have my life back and the freedom to use it. It’s great to have woken up and be back in control of my life. My life seems to have more value and purpose now than before.
No more wasted time – its too precious. It’s just me and the open road ahead and that’s a good feeling but a little bit like flying by the seat of your pants too. The cost might be high in terms of my immediate personal comfort and long term financial security but I feel as if I have escaped from something repressive that had coiled itself around me so tightly I could no longer move, see, or think clearly anymore. You don’t have to make drastic changes in your life but maybe reflect occasionally about whether or not life has to be lived the way you are living it and whether your lifestyle is actually killing you and damaging others too. Loosen the coils a bit and don’t be afraid to consider alternatives. Consider how free we really are and how much we fear what we do not know or have never experienced? You don’t need to travel very far to find your own answers.
What is important to me from now on is to care for those who depend on me until they can take care of themselves, express myself, learn, write and teach. If I can do these things then I know I will be happy wherever I am and will probably live longer and more healthily as a result. I am not glued to what I am doing now and who knows I could change again and do something else if it seems like the right thing to do. I may die with little to show for having existed, and be forgotten almost immediately, but at least I will have led my life in my own way rather than the way someone else thought I should live it.
I plan to live a simple satisfying life from now on that hopefully benefits others. I don’t need religions. politics, programmes or theories to complicate matters as all the answers are I think fairly simple on a personal level. I am trying to lead a good life and be a good person but that’s never easy and you can be inspired by many different thinkers whatever their beliefs. I like the idea of Karma so it’s not such a bad idea to be nice to to other people and treat them well and respect diversity and difference. Life is too short and there are so many important things to be doing so I intend to use what skills I’ve got in a positive way. If I am fortunate and find myself with more resources I won’t be changing much at all just doing more of what I am already doing and maybe more for those less fortunate than I am. I hope my epitaph might read ‘It wasn’t much [in the grand scheme of things] but it’ll do for now’.
