MANY a time, a person feels stuck, as if he’s going nowhere. But fear of the unknown makes him cling on to the familiar, and he builds a life around and within the “state of being stuck” until retirement.
Like tentacles wrapped tight on the familiar, suction cups all engaged, people tend to hold on for safety and security, to the familiar.
But what if that feeling is telling you that you have to leave?
In normal situations, where life decisions aren’t involve, we would simply back out when on a deadend. But we do not normally do that when faced with life decisions, and we wonder why life isn’t treating us well.
I’ve stayed for more than three decades because life as a journalist never runs out of adventures, changes, and challenges. But everyone grows old and needs a less stressful life, and so I jumped out and tried what I thought was less stressful. It wasn’t because not just the sedentary life was driving me crazy, it was the environment’s focus on non-essentials, the trivial, the non-reality, the un-peace.
And so I jumped out to find the balance that only peace in the soul can bring and do what life has prepared me for.
The cue word is preparing. That means discovering everything that has to be discovered, all talents, all capabilities have to be discovered, honed, and be always ready to be engaged.
Sad is the person who doesn’t discover the talents he is gifted with just because he believes he does not have any.
Sadder are those who do not see the escape hatch to the drudgery of life.
True, there will be life’s realities that demand we stay put, but staying put is just eight hours a day. There are 16 other hours and eight hours because you need to sleep for eight.
We waste these, content with spending hours on our phone, engaging in non-essentials, in arguments with people who do not even matter, convincing ourselves that we deserve the idle hours. In the end, our capabilities stagnate and all we get to show for it is a deep-seated anger stirred up by people who do not even have a stake in our lives. Sad.
Stuck, held hostage by the heckling of others, angry, morose, and yet everything is of our own making.
Me, I just jumped. Another life beckons. I’m not sure how that will go. All I know is that I’m the perfect image and likeness of God and that is awesome enough.
saestremera@gmail.com