We always travel along a precipice. Our truest obligation is to keep our balance.
(Jose Ortega Gasset - PC alliteration mine)
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One day last week, I was remembering what it was like to get up each morning, drive to a job, take the same lunch time each day and drive home at the same time each day.
The job itself wasn't bad. I was making decent money as a system administrator for a health insurance company. My boss was awesome and I did have a personal friendship with him. I could always count on him to "get" me, even when it wasn't necessarily in the best interests of the company. He allowed me a degree of freedom that some others were not allowed, mostly because he knew I would do what I said I'd do. If an application was due for release on a certain date, he knew I'd get it done. The software updates would be complete and the application would be tested. On time.
This was around the same time I was emailing back and forth with R, the guy who invited me to visit his place in Thailand.
One day I left work at 3.oo PM, as usual. I drove on I-50 and it had the usual number of cars. I turned off on Watt Ave and there were the usual number of cars waiting to merge. I got the same stoplight at Watt and Fair Oaks at the same time and my car was, as usual, in the same place.
Right there at that stoplight, I began crying. Not little pesky tears that just made it hard to see but wracking sobs.
"I might as well be f***ing dead," I said to no one in particular.
The left-turn lane at that particular intersection typically took at least 3 iterations of the red light/green light routine, so I was okay to drive by the time it was my turn.
But in that moment I decided to take R up on his offer. I needed to get the hell away from my life and everything associated with it. I felt like Babbit on speed.
I got home, called my boss Joe who, bless him a thousand times, tried to talk some sense into me, tried to convince me that there were better ways to do this than to simply call up and quit, to tell him I was going to Southeast Asia to visit a friend and to completely trash my life over what would ultimately seem like a minor upset.
It didn't work. I made my plans and I left. A week later, I was walking through the night market with R. It was hotter'n'hell and yet, I'd found my home. I was very, very happy.
For me.. personally.. it was the best decision I ever made. Yes, there were consequences. I had one pissed off landlord and Joe wasn't really too happy when I failed to reappear for nine months. But those fences can be mended with a sincere apology and in the case of the landlord, financial reparations. I'm clean enough with that.
This got me thinking though about obligation and balance. Where does obligation end and how far can we go to find our own balance, even if it hurts other people? Can we be true to ourselves, even
in that light?I believe we can. In fact, I will go so far as to say we have an obligation to do so. After all, what can we offer anyone or anything else from an empty well? "Hurting other people" is not the same as inconveniencing them. What I did was not actually harmful. It was careless, yes. It was inconsiderate, yes. It was not "harmful".
At what point would you be willing to do something similar to find your own balance, even at the risk of disappointing others?
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