. . . To Be Anything At All

It seems like many of us become caught up attempting to excel in the rat race of living in a 1st world country. We’re bombarded with distractions and sometimes it feels as if the main purpose of life can be to work and make enough money to survive. From an early age, we learn about the societal programs that seem to dominate our lives: go to school, fit in, go to college, get a good career, get married, have a family. While there isn’t anything particularly wrong with this path or any path for that matter, it does feel like many times the point of all this seems lost in the rushing. There seems to be a overwhelming fixation on what is aptly called “destination addiction”.

I definitely have spent so much time focused on this type of thinking. “When I achieve this (career, degree, business, relationship, net worth, etc.) I will allow myself to feel (content, successful, proud, love, etc.)” To a certain extent I think it is very important to have our basic needs met. I do, however find myself pausing more and more to attempt to absorb the beauty of what it means to be and experience anything at all. To be a human being on this spinning spacecraft called Earth is a astounding experience. Slowing down to just think about how all of this could have possibly came to be regularly blows my mind.

I often feel this sense of wonder when I ride my unicycle by the ocean and dance to my music. I also feel this wonderful peace when I am out in nature as well. I feel like it is important in my life to slow down when I can remember and attempt to remember that just to have a sliver of time on this planet as a human is a glorious gift. There was a long time that I didn’t think so. I was absorbed in pain, and spent many years intoxicated in order to numb out emotions from the past that I didn’t wish to examine. Now that I have put in a extreme amount of effort to confront and embrace my demons, I am finally beginning to see with clearer vision how profound it is to be alive.