Nightly Thoughts...

And I guess all we really need is one question to actually get us thinking, but it is always up to us whether we want to think about the question or just dismiss it and keep on going...

And so today after a long day I got a message from an old friend, a friend that had moved back to her home country when we were still teens and now time has passed, life has happened and she was wanting to know how things were going, she was a best friend during those high school years but time and growth have happened that it appears harder to have a conversation with any of them. As much as I love them and I am here to listen to them, the time that was not spend through the years just letting each other know what was going on seems to have caught up with us and the easiness in which we were able to strike a conversation is no longer there. 

Anyway... enough of that because I am sure everyone has gone through that at some point, you stop talking and communicating with someone and then suddenly you try again and all you get is small talk, something that most people are ok with but unfortunately I am not.  All in all my friend asked me why I had moved to the city I am living in now, why so far away from family and some friends that were left behind, it seemed incomprehensible to her that I would just go out on my own and find a new place when socially we all want to always be around people we love and that are familiar to us even if those are no good for us.

I sat here and just wondered how to answer her, no answer would have ever suffice to explain to her how I just really woke up one day and felt like this is where I needed to be and then went with it.  It has come to my attention how hard it is for people to understand the concept of going with your gut, of following your bliss, going where you feel you will be happy, whether that place is full of friends or not, whether there is family there or not, the place where your gut feeling is telling you to go is the place where you should be. 

Most people decide that they have to make everything fit for the purpose of making it logical right now, any move, any change in job; it all seems to be an issue of how much money will I make, how much family support will I have or how many more opportunities will arise from this move.  Life never seems to be about whether or not we will be happy doing what we are doing and the sad part is that now a days I find it not surprising when people look at me like I am a total weirdo because I just don't have a 5-year life plan that I am following.  

It is sad because life is not planned, it is also sad because when I say: "I am doing this because it gives me joy and while your offer of working in this company that has great benefits and great pay which will according to you allow me to buy all the things I (according to you) need, I would die working in a place I don't like, so I am sorry but I choose to be poor of money and rich in joy." I am looked at like a completely irrational person... I don't know when it was that life changed, I am sure that at one point human beings looked for joy rather than things and it was the amount of joy they had in their lives that measured their success and not the amount of things or the amount of money they had. 

But hey! I think I've written about this before right? Follow your bliss, you gut, your intuition... Lately in my own spiritual path I have been doing that more and more, and all I can say is that while it is extremely hard to let yourself be guided by something you don't quite understand, it has also been extremely rewarding and fulfilling.  I have learned a lot in the past few years and even recently, still learning to trust because as any other human being in this planet I want logic and I want everything to be connected at the moment I am doing things but life is not like that, life connects all the dots as you are living it. 

Last Sunday, another old friend contacted me (I guess one can say that there is something that needed reminding), this friend was one that I had worked with for a a few months a few years back, from a distance I have seen him achieve certain things in his life that anyone else would love to have, so far he has reached part of the potential I knew he had, just this gut feeling telling me hey that guy over there, he has the ability to be great! What kind of greatness he achieved was and will continue to be up to him.  So I am sitting there letting him know about how life is going (and this is one of those people with whom you can always talk and he will always listen, and it just makes you feel like hey it's all good and I get what you are saying, and that part of him has not changed) and he is letting me know how his life is going and then he stated how he had recently come to appreciate free time more, work was busy, managing people is harder than expected, things change when everything you and accomplish is not based only on your work but it's actually based on the performance of others. 

And so I said to him: This is why I do what I do, I might not have a lot of money, I might not have a brand new car, I might not have all the things that people say I should have to be happy, but I have joy, the only time I am not full of joy is when I am talking to people that are trying to tell me what to do. And so, I said, I have ended up with not too many friends and I have a hard time talking to people my age because they are all looking for that, they have graduated college, they want to get a good job, get married, buy a nice house, have kids and all that "good stuff" meanwhile I am here saying to myself, I tried that and life slapped me so hard when I went with what was supposed to be done and I was not happy, now, some of those folks my age have their good job, some have gotten a house and have the nice car, but the job they have is not something they really want to do and so here comes Friday and they are all getting ready to go out and party and go to the bar and get drunk because they just can't stand their job and they need a distraction (he was laughing while I was saying this and nodding, possibly because he is one of them) and I am at home saying to myself ohh I love my job I want to go and work some more and then that is what I do. 

But this concept is so hard for people to understand, it is not until they are about to die that they realize ohh I should have lived more and worked less, maybe my life would have been different if I would have not planned it so much and I would have done what I truly wanted not what would have given me more money.  It is so hard to understand that your fate is to die and that you don't know when that will happen but that whatever you do between now and then should be something that fills you with joy not with pain and regret.  That whatever you do right now is what counts and it is even a harder concept to accept that when you do the things you love the most then the money usually follows, it comes with it, you get good at what you love because you practice it daily without frowning at it, you love it so why wouldn't you do it? you want to work at it, you want to get better, it's not forced, and anything that is not forced and that is allowed to flow and is full of love it's always great! I don't think there is anyone that could tell me right now that anything that was created with love and passion is not a great thing. The energy it gives out is amazing and yet we refuse to do what we love and end up doing what we think we must. 

I've probably rambled enough tonight... point is though, follow your gut, your intuition, trust it, where you want to be right now, go there! Nothing is stopping you, life is about living it and doing what you love, when you do what you love you attract love.  Don't sit there and think that because parents have raised you to think that the goal of life is to acquire things so that you can have a safe retirement and no debt and blah blah blah, and that the only way to get that is to have a good job that your job might not be perfect but it's good as long as it pays well, mmm let me tell you something, those parents were about your age when they had you, and they are probably not at the end yet but just about to reach it, a period when everything changes and then the priorities change and then life is given a different meaning, time is more important because then it becomes quite clear that you don't have enough of it, and you look to spend that small amount you have left with the ones you love but we are busy being busy and so it is an endless vicious cycle, then death arrives and we regret the time that was not spent and the moments we missed.  And the flaw in all of this is that we all keep thinking that we will reach that age and that we will have time to do the things we do but we really don't, meanwhile we are missing out on the best things in life.  The song Cat's in the cradle by Harry Chapin puts this truth out there, but I guess it's just a song we sing until the time we actually decide to listen to it and get the meaning out of it. 

So, go do what you love, go where you want to go and don't worry about figuring it all out, even those who think that they've got it figured out are still trying to figure it all out, as one of my friends stated to me today: I will figure it out as I go along but I will be joyful along the way...