Choosing....

Yesterday I wrote about my mainstream fantasies fading to black.

Actually, that happened a long time ago.

My mother tells me (and I have a vague recollection) that when I was six years old, I told her firmly that I would not grow up, get married and have babies. Of course at such a young age, I had no idea what else was available ~ but I knew the "building" life wouldn't be for me.

It's not that I put these things in a hierarchy and determine that one way of being is more important than another ~ or even more socially relevant. Obviously though, householders are very important. Without them, there would be no "us". People need to have children and create that life. For those of us who are not attracted to it, it looks as foreign as something from another planet. It is hard to understand the basis of it.. or how it can appeal to so many.

For those of us who live nearly always in our hearts and spirits, fairly removed from material existence, it looks like a burden. Day-to-day responsibilities and the burden of having to be constantly building, creating and improving feels Sisyphean.

We are about ideas. My best times are spent in fairly deep contemplation, usually about the nature of life on this plane or some other philosophical conundrum. I'm an observer, rather emotionally detached from dailiness.

Some would view that as dilettantism. Self-indulgent nonsense. Many wonder why we don't just settle down and get busy shifting. As one person blogged some time ago, most of life is shifting things from one place to another.

Being contemplative isn't dilettantism though. It is something that drives us, makes us feel whole, gives us a sense of purpose in the world. When I was trying to live that other life, even in its modified form, it was like a trip through the hell realms because I couldn't find any purpose. Every day was hollow and meaningless. I could never create and build in the traditional way. My marriage failed because I couldn't connect into that world. When I returned at the end of the day to my house full of "stuff", I wondered if that's all there really is. When I looked at my husband, I wondered why we were doing what we were doing. That unrootedness led me to do a lot of drinking. When I stopped that, I was face-to-face with a full existential crisis and had to start making changes.

Any logical person might wonder why I am writing all this drivel. It's not of any particular interest. Simple. I'm trying to be understood. Often I feel like a singular voice in a universe that doesn't speak my language. The ghost in the machine.

Why I feel the need to be heard and understood at this stage is unknown. For now, I'm just going with it.

One of the ways I realized this is that when I think about what life would look like if I had no limitations, it always comes back to this basic path.

I wish all the cultures of the world, including my chosen one, placed more relevance on it.

So.. let me put this out there: If you had no limitations ~ financial, cultural, physical or emotional ~ what would your life look like?

~*

If you had to design a life....

Last night I was reading and began thinking about something.

If you had to design a life for yourself, say you were a life coach, knowing what you know now, what would you have designed?

I would have encouraged me to be a nurse. The reason is multifold, not the least of which is that I am quite good at practical things. Not so good at the theoretical and in that sense, my sociology degree has not been helpful in any regard.

I like international travel. As a nurse, I would have spent my entire working life traveling to different countries, helping people with their medical issues. At the same time, I would have used that as a platform for human rights education which is very important to me.

Refugee camps and villages would have been my choice of where to use my skills. I would have done it through an independent agency, nothing with any government connections because that would have left me free to support my own beliefs and not be an unknowing propagandist for any government. (And, yes, that would include Thai.)

That would have worked well for me because I am simply not the type of person for typical family life and I can not see me ever having a career in the workplace environment here.

So.. what about you?

~*
On an unrelated topic, I was listening to the news and heard that Fidel Castro is stepping down. The immediate assumption is that the Cuban people will naturally choose the way of life here over their own. Already, the US government is planning and plotting how to make the "transition to democracy." Does it ever occur to anyone in power in the US that everyone else in the world might not agree that its way of life is the only one worth living?

Does this strike anyone else as incredibly arrogant?


~Chani