[Guest Post: The World Ends with You]
My Friend Wayne over at evilobi did a guest post today. Here's what he wrote:
So the question occurs to me when one comes to the point of acceptance of one’s place in the world. But the real ponderous thought occurs when you LEAVE your place in the world, and look back and think “I lived 4 miles from (insert tourist attraction here) and never once went.” Obviously, I’m not thinking leaving from this plane of existence to the next; but from one physical location, to another physical location. I hate the idea that we skip the tourist attractions that we live closest too. Instead if we do opt to go out, we pick something completely out of the way ignoring the “easy ones”. Often the reason is “it’s right there, we can go any time we want.” But anytime rarely comes. This isn’t an uncommon thing, I’ve spoken to numerous people the world over, who will tell you similar stories.
About August of last year I was given a relocation opportunity that my wife and I jumped at. The more we pondered this relocation opportunity, the more we realized that we didn’t want to miss out on life. We did not want to become those people who said that aforementioned phrase. We made a list of everything within 150 miles that we could find that we could do, wither or not we wanted to – and in 4 months we did all but 3. The list had 23 items on it. The 3 we did not do. Two were restricted by time of the year, 1 was just circumstance. We had the plans made and it fell through, and we ran out of time. We foolishly didn’t plan for a backup knowing it could happen. A Regret I wish I didn’t have.
Life is an adventure. There are those people who allow life to live them, and those who allow themselves to live their life.
Laura and I are currently discussing her list of 101 things that she wants to do in 1001 days. Some items on her list is really ambitious, and I’m impressed that she wants to tackle such a large feat. Currently, she has herself learning two musical instruments, being in a play, writing a novel in a month, and learning to dance. I think she’s got the correct general Idea, at least one of her items that she gave me I would view as “inevitable”. When I approached her on this she said “they don’t have to be hard.” But if you stay in your comfort zone the entire time are you really living life? Other things on her list, are also on my list of “things to do, but the wife really doesn’t want me to but will likely let me anyway.” Or “Things my wife wants to do.” Most of us have life ambitions, things we want, places we want to go. Most of us go through life with ideas, but little purpose. So once must sit back and ask themselves, that particular question “Do I have a purpose… or just ideals.” And are you living in the worlds time, or is the world living on my time?
So as we progress through life from childhood to adults, our parents give us certain ideals, and we are protected and bubbled by our family. As we grow older we are given new ideas, but often the bubble remains. This bubble continues as we grow in our own adulthood, and then we have kids, and in the interest of protecting them we too, bubble them and the cycle continues. I’m not saying that protecting your family shouldn’t be a priority, because it absolutely should be. What you should question is, what are you protecting them from? At some point you need to allow them to pop their bubble. They won’t know what in life that they like if they don’t try it. How would they know what part of life will make them happy if they are discouraged from breaking their bubble? And if we live in a bubble, are we really living life?
I am part of an open source project. We have developers from all over the world. One of our German developers made a point one day “You Americans, you have no foot culture.” I thought about this deeply, and it makes a lot of sense. For example, in Germany they have HUGE festivals every month in every part of the country. People get out, and socialize with strangers, kick back a few frosty beverages in their beer gardens and enjoy the randomness of strangers. Most Americans, are tied to their Televisions, their computers, their iPhones and internet access. In certain parts of Europe, internet is free. You have a privileged right to free internet. If you want better you pay for it. But it’s given to you. I believe that it’s this thought process that allows people to get out and be out. Because “it’s there, it will be there tomorrow even if I don’t pay my bill… it’ll just be slower.” So it gets ignored, and people go out. This is the opposite of most Americans I know who say “that attraction will be there tomorrow.” This German friend is huge into the underground scene. Every weekend he’s out drinking, dancing, and out in public. This is normal, there are very few people that he knows that as he describes it “that aren’t old sloths” that don’t go out. According to him, you can be 21 and be an old sloth. They get very drunk, but they are very healthy, psychically and socially. They do believe in not living in a bubble. They are allowed to freely live their lives. Despite their current government setup they are in a lot of ways more free to do more things, and they do take advantage of it.
The world ends with you, if you want to enjoy life, expand your world. You’ve got to push your horizons as far out as they’ll go. Realistically we need to all find our next horizon and see if we can’t push it a little further.
As for Laura, Good luck, I do hope you make it; and as I said. Make your list, and cut 200 days off it. If you do, by the time you hit your 801st day it’ll make sense as to why.
Thanks Wayne :)
0 thoughts :
Post a Comment