~ Living Against the Grain ~

I couldn’t concentrate on the normal things in life. It was hard – all too much harder than it was supposed to be. To be concerned with a career, to build up portfolios, to accumulate material wealth and neglect the present to focus on the future. To be frank, none of it interested me and I couldn’t force myself to do the things that everyone around me seemed to centre their life on. I thought there were only two possibilities: that I was missing something, or they were missing something. When you’re in the vast minority of any behaviour, it’s easy to categorise yourself as the wrong or weird one. But the more I observed the others doing the things they believed they were supposed to do, the more I was quite sure that many were on the wrong road, chasing happiness down a dead-end street. There were many moments where I experienced a profound bliss without having much at all. Just to sit and meditate, to go on walks in the woods, to write some words down and live in tune with my inner nature. This, I felt, was the true source to my happiness; and I also felt, although each person’s ‘things’ may have been different, essentially this was the way to so many people’s happiness – living in tune with their true nature. Meanwhile I saw many successful people on the ‘correct’ path – people with high-paying jobs, nice cars, big houses, large social groups, flash watches, and designer clothes – completely screwed up by the age of thirty. Drug addicts, prostitute addicts, gambling addicts, ego maniacs. Poverty obviously had its known downfalls, but it was clear that being too ingrained in the system could be immensely damaging to the individual too. Quite clearly, there was a price tag for being too involved in a game that lacked any soul or substance. Yet, this was what so many strived for; to achieve what we were socially conditioned as ‘the good life’. Just living in opposition to that, I knew I was experiencing the happiness that so many of those people were searching for. It was a striking realisation; perhaps one that had come at too young of an age. These sorts of realisations about life usually came at a later point in one’s life – maybe after a divorce or midlife crisis. Well, perhaps some others would eventually share my way of thinking too, but for now, I decided I’d keep living the same way I was. And also to keep writing down a few words here and there. Mostly because I enjoyed doing it, but maybe to see if anyone else felt the same way too.