So, in a few fleeting moments, surrounding a select group of situational circumstances, it has fallen upon me: You know when you’re young and think, “I can’t wait till I’m a grown up”. It seems that from that far away, the distant “life”, as it were, seemed almost boundless. Every lasting in a way that rivals the greatest depths of our imaginations….our young…naïve imaginations. Everyone tells you that you can be whatever you want. So being young and green, you play out a few scenarios on which to mold your actions for the next couple decades. What people fail to tell you is that you indeed can not be whatever you want…that the possibilities aren’t endless….and that you’ll probably have to settle with something sooner…or later and that the “Land of Opportunity” is where dreams go to die….now this isn’t a rant. More like thinking aloud. What if the possibilities were endless and we could change our chosen professions on a whim…as if that is what determined who you were as a person…and not just a laborer. Wouldn’t it be really neat to decide that you wanted to be a marine biologist one day and a race car driver the next? What they don’t tell you when you’re young, is that in order to be anything you want to be you must go through a rigorous gauntlet of schooling and incur a vast myriad of expenses in order for a chance to meet with a powerful enough interviewer that could grant you a position….maybe in your chosen path of professionalism, maybe a detoured version of what you thought your life would be. Is it just one of those arbitrary institutions that have been bestowed upon one before we could even talk? The path that was set before us because others believe it is right? Like sitting on a bench singing pre-made, hand-me-down songs in hopes that it will some how make you a better person….or how about worshiping a man made currency system which has no intrinsic value in which to base your spiritual, mental, and physical well being. Though money serves its purposes in life, when you die, how will it benefit you? Or if you really had ALL the money in the world, would you really be wealthy? Nay. No one else would have any so it would mean nothing. (Sorry I’m not sorry Gwen) What parents should say to their children is not, “You can be anything you want to be when you grow up”. It should be, “How are you going to choose to procure more of this inanimate form of value that you’ll use to barter for the things you “need” to “live”…as if living in a city, surrounded by machines buildings and materialistic idolatry were really living. Take a look at I life in it’s purest forms and you’ll find no botox, hair dye, tummy tucks, trucks, video games, or fast food restaurants around…you’ll find the body, the mind, and the spirit all coexisting in a symbiotic relationship or sorts. That, which distracts the mind, distracts the soul. I’m not trying to be preachy or even coherent in my thoughts….I only mean to convey a way of thinking which has come to me in my recent years upon leaving the nest that was my home….it seems that knowledge and life has a funny way of taking your course…your plan of action…for everything that you imagined would be you one day In new and uncharted tangents from the circumference of your trained, train of though. I’m not asking for you to join me in my endeavors of nothing and everything all at the same time….just to see a point of view for what it is…just the innocent observations of just another fly on the wall. And so it has fallen upon me: life’s a garden…dig it, eat it, smoke it. Do what you want with it; it’s yours for the harvesting, just don’t waste it in futility.
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail” ---Ralph Waldo Emerson
