A friend wrote on his blog yesterday; (http://paulbritton.blogspot.com)
“You can plan your life and set all the goals in the World, but the World has a not so strange way of doing the opposite.
Do you work for happiness or should you make happiness work for you? I think the latter. As a chef as in life you strive to always improve and learn, hoping to drive your career to meet your goal, before striving for the next!
Is life just a continuum for improving your knowledge and skill and looking for the next best job with bigger salary and or job title ? “
James Claire was born in 1969, the last of the free thinking, free believing sixties children. The “Mommas and the Papas”, California Dreaming still plays in my head all these years later. I remember, although not the actual day, Man’s landing on the moon, about a month after my own First step on this planetary body. Neil Armstrong and I both made the world a better place to live in 1969.
Landing on the moon gave us all dreams of being astronauts and explorers. It was a great time.
Early seventies with our bell bottom bad taste clothing and absurd colour schematics that possibly drug induced parents thought were cool, probably gave us children the ability to dream even harder. I could have been a clothes designer. In the seventies anyone could have been had they just designed anything 360 degrees different to what everyone was wearing.
Today August 14th 2011, I am living in a world where all my dreams have blurred. I’m a little lost my friends. In essence Im the luckiest man alive. I have been offered multiple amazing options for the remainder of my life and I have the choose the right one. But do I live the dream , do I sell my soul for cash or do I take the responsible corporate career choice !
Another dear friend wrote to me today and explained that to find the vision I need right now, the direction to life from here to eternity, that I need to address the THREE ME’s. He stated them as the James who writes, the James who Cook’s and the James who just wants to be the free radical and have fun.
I see it slightly differently; as the Philosopher, the Creator and the Adventurer.
I once had a singular career. I now have two. Both drawing me in totally different areas.
I’m not scared to state that at forty two I’m a little apprehensive. Just like Neil Armstrong must have been blasting off on a mission to a planet no one had ever landed on before.
I too am thinking, is this sane!
As kids dreams are crystal clear. They have a point.!
I want to be a fireman to fight fires, I want to be an astronaut to go to the moon. What those dreams don’t have is repercussions, politics , or old people in them.
Dreams of just a few years ago where to continue climbing the corporate ladder.
My dreams of today are to have a family, have children and raise them safe and well.
But to do so, one needs money. (ahh the root of all evil? ) The writer/philosopher can etch out a living for sure, but at a slower pace and possibly not at the rate the children will require.
The Creator Chef can easily earn the vast sums required from any corporate position but there are days the body feels prematurely aged and not willing to climb the ladder any longer.
And the Adventurer, well his head is in the jungles of Borneo and wandering the lush hills and valleys of the Tuscan hillsides , boating on Lake Cuomo and sailing along the Amalfi Coast. The Adventurer can have a great honeymoon but unless there is a wealthy benefactor his dreams will crash and burn faster than most.
Are we just put here on earth to work for 60 years then die?
Why are only such a small percentage of us allowed to earn excessive amounts of money that allow them to live freely and live their dream?
Is it best to chase the dollar over all else just to give the next generation, the life we wished we had lived ourselves, or is it better to raise children in a low income but high love family environment.
I am at the precipice of a major life dilemna.! Perhaps at 42 I am suppose to just go buy a Ferrari and enjoy that my future wife looks great sitting in it !!!
But that’s not me. Me is sitting in apartment 26 floors above reality looking out on a vision of blurry dreams.
Carl Jung wrote in his Psychology of the Unconscious of Dreams , “Dreams are symbolic in order that they cannot be understood; in order that the wish, which is the source of the dream, may remain unknown."
The dreams of which I speak are perhaps childhood wishes of what life should have been for us all, had we all remained children. Dreams of my adulthood are far simpler, financial, safety, family.
Yet the manner to get there is not simple. Do I sell my soul for stability or do I fight the corporate ladder for respect or do I meander through life and just hope and pray every day that “something” will get us through to the next.
But life is not as Charles De Lint wrote in the Onion Girl,” What I want to do is travel deeper and deeper into the dreamlands, to find that place that I know is waiting for me here. My home.”
Dreamer/Philosopher/Writer James may live there and have his home in Dreamland but sitting here, right now, as James the Creator, I think that all these questions are in fact just the dreamer within.
Reality is I have to go to work whether I like it or not. Reality is responsibility and responsibility means providing for a family, even if at this moment I don’t have one!
Well, as they say, One can dream right !
Long time. Finally a post.
ReplyDeleteOnly when you take a break from a "job" and when you have no pay check coming at the end of the mnth, it makes you see life in a totally different light.
It has greats pros too- you get to sit back, relax, enjoy life, contemplate and not worry about getting to work on time! I feel it is necessary to take a break to enjoy the preciousness of not doing anything :-)and this is different from your yearly vacations.