Removing oneself from one's life and responsibilities is no easy task. The longer we are in one place the deeper our roots grow. Overgrowth from our surroundings wraps it's string like vines around our limbs. And while they offer nourishment, comfort, and a sense of identity in this world when the time comes to make a change they can be burdensome. They turn from organic ways of living to restrictive chains. All of a sudden making a large scale change (sometimes even small scale changes) seem impossible. The vines and roots themselves are not problems. It's our relationship with them. They could be your material possessions like your car, your phone, an apartment, your new queen size bed, all your old photos and boxes of nostalgic keepsakes you have sitting in your attic. These are not bad
things. They are comforting, helpful in the right situations, and at times necessary . But all of them come with a price. Whether it's a financial price or it consumes our time, our energy, our space or our health. They all require something from the host to survive. And whatever you don't have a lot of becomes more and more precious. Health, finances, space and energy fluctuates from person to person and at different points in our lives. The one thing we are ALL limited on is TIME. Time can never be regained and ,in my opinion, most of us way overestimate the amount that we have. We always assume there will be a tomorrow. That someday we will do the things we want to do. We will live the life we want to live when we have our finances in order and we have a house and we are a stable person. And we have to earn it! No one just gets to have the life they want without suffering for it! Time becomes a bank account we keep drawing from and we have no idea how much is in that account but we keep writing checks. We keep spending. We keep assuming the money will be there and we squander it on measly expenses we really care nothing about and are doing nothing to improve our lives. When I started to really understand how precious this lifetime for me was I stopped assuming that my days of traveling and seeing the world in my old age of retirement would actually come to fruition. There is no guarantee that you will even wake up tomorrow. And if someone tells you different they are telling you bullshit. Bullshit that they have to believe themselves because they are terrified. They are terrified to believe that they will perish before they are ready and the life that they lived wasn't enough. That parts of it were wasted on measly expenses and they never did the things that would truly make them happy. Life expectancy is truly the wrong term. Time can never be expected.
I came to a realization at some point that the dreams I had about one day traveling or moving off somewhere far away and experiencing a new way of living were never going to come true with the way I was going about my life. I would never have the financial freedom, I had too many things I was carrying in my space, I had bills and a car payment, student loans and insurance I was always one bad bill away from totally fucking burying myself in a debt I would never be able to climb out of. Who even knows what would become of the world by the time I got to this elusive "retirement" a few generations of people had experienced. Now granted I was going off the projectory of my life at the time. The universe could have provided me with a new opportunity or one of the thousand dates I went on could have actually worked out and I would have a partner that would help with making the necessary advancements. But every new potential became a dead end. And again I was left with sole responsibility of a decision.
I think I was torn for many years about a few things. There has always been a dichotomy in the way I wanted to live my life. Part of me wanted to stay. Continue doing good work at a job that I had first struggled with so much in the beginning. I invested so much of my time and energy and it had paid off in my personal development, my abilities as a teacher, a dancer and as a business person. I had developed close personal and professional relationships. A sense of community and purpose...and yet part of me knew I could never get to the end of my life and regret not taking the big risk.
to be continued....
