Some statements are hard to swallow. When your eyes are gazing at the floor and your heart is pounding, you force a smile to let the situation pass as uneventful as it possibly can. But you find yourself at your desk, fuming. This is what happened in my morning. I was told that Christmas was going to be a little less Merry this year, for reasons I cant really divulge on a blog but I can say that it's making me think.
I set out this year to prove a point. I was trying to prove that even though I am a young mother, I can still pursue a career, I ended up biting off a lot more than I could chew. It's now the end of the year and I feel as if a train has rolled on over me. I'm tired from the inside. I worked countless late nights, countless weekends, putting family second and work first. I took on two second jobs, freelancing when I could, all to prove my point and now, to my horror, I realize it was all in vain. I've put all my eggs in one basket, even after the countless warnings we've received about diversifying our lives.
Now I'm stuck, or am I? I met a man on a boat when I was shark cage diving. He was friendly and had a smile on his face that I found myself envying. What made him so happy? Being a journalist I was interested in this man's story and so I asked all the questions and listened to his incredible tale. He worked in a corporate environment, sat behind a desk daily and decided to take some leave and go on holiday. He picked Uganda and came across the local orphanage, when he got back to his regular job and sat behind his desk, his boss started whining about a trivial matter, it was then, in that moment, that he got up and walked out of his old life.
That takes balls. That takes the type of courage some of us can only dream about. Now he pursues a life of traveling and volunteering, doing what he considers meaningful. I asked him if he was happy in his life and he quickly answered YES with a big, toothy grin but a word of caution was quickly issued. He told me that his life was not glamorous, it wasn't filled with material possessions, he often slept on the floor of wherever he was staying but it was a life that fulfilled him to his core and he was more than happy to give up some of what we consider the "finer" things in life. I think he stated that for me because I have often been told that I can come across as quite a snob. I didn't take it as an insult, I took it as a sign of respect from a man that respected my value system, or what he assumed it was.
I felt drawn to this man, drawn to his ideals, drawn to his values and his moral code, the compass that guides him through his life and I wondered how someone like him, a simple person, could have discovered the secret so easily, something that we search lifetimes for. Is it really that simple? Do things really just work out for the best? All I know for certain is that we are doing something profoundly wrong and that we should all strive for the happiness that this man has clearly found, I'm sure that for everyone it would be different, but living this life is becoming unnatural. Let's change it.
