Life Anyway

I've been having a hard time lately because I've always worked a job, and now I'm not doing that. I was brought up to work hard and earn a living, but what if there's more to my life than that? If there is, then how do I balance what I've been taught and believed for so long with what I truly feel I'm being called to do at this particular point in my life? How do I fully stop thinking the old way, the only way I've ever known, and embrace this new thing in my life?

Society has such a stranglehold on us all, dictating what "normal" is, and ridiculing or scorning those that no longer fit into their neat little predefined boxes of how things "should" be and how people should behave or live their lives. If society has it so figured out, then why are there so many people walking the line of "normal" who are completely miserable, and don't even want to get up out of bed in the morning? People who can't stand the job they've been faithfully reporting to five or six days a week for the past twenty-five years, who haven't enjoyed that job since a month after they started. I submit that normal is killing us in droves. All in the name of chasing something that doesn't truly exist: normalcy of life.

What if this "normal" isn't something we were ever intended for? What if we were created for something grander? Is it possible that there is something that matters more than despising what we feel we're forced to do for forty or fifty hours week after week and year after year?

I'm writing, and I truly have no idea if anyone besides my family and friends will actually read my words. My wife asked me a very poignant question last night when I finally told her I was concerned about this. "So what? Maybe you should be asking yourself, "What if people actually do read what you write?" Are you writing for someone to read it, or are you writing it for you, because you know it's what you're supposed to be doing right now?"

Yep, she's pretty much a genius. If I'm writing for everyone else, it's going to change how or what I write. Just like if I'm living for everyone else and their expectations, it's going to change how I live. How we live is important, but if we're living for other people and their expectations of who we should be, aren't we dying a little every day? Only one person's opinion of me matters. The opinion of the one who made me to begin with. And I'm pretty sure He's cheering me on, and can't wait to read the next words I put down, even though He's the one that gave them to me in the first place.

Who are you living your life to please today? Why do they get such an important say in what you do? Something to think about. Now, I'm not telling you to go out and knock over an armored truck later this afternoon. There are certain expectations of society that are there for a very good reason, and the distinct possibility of a life in prison is bad any way you look at it. Simply put, pursuit of life: good, pursuit of prison: markedly less than good. But if you've got a burning desire to do that one thing, and every day that passes without you doing it causes a piece of you to die, maybe you should figure out a way that you can do that thing. It's probably the one thing that will allow you to truly live. And isn't that the reason we call this breathing thing "life", anyway?

Until next time, stay safe, and above all, be true to yourself.

That Aaron Guy