A year ago, I made a commitment to myself, and began an effort to make shifts in my habits, to say ‘no’ a lot more, and to reclaim my life in ways that for too long had gone awry. This week, I had to make that commitment again.
Tag: philosophy
When I was young, maybe about 12 years old, I had a dream of performing my music in front of a sea of people. It was just me under a spotlight, holding a guitar, with a microphone on a stand in front of me. I’m not sure what song I was about to sing, but it felt good to be there.
There are probably as many ways to achieve success and happiness in life as there are philosophies, ideologies, values, and belief systems. This is the beauty and complexity of the human experience: you can be who and what you want to be, or at least try and then choose something completely different. Even in the darkest places and during the most chaotic times, we are adaptable and capable of transcendence.
It starts from the top. That is something we all know. We don’t know who is truly at the top; it certainly isn’t a president, prime minister, or pope. Oligarchs? Clever (but evil) aliens? Stonecutters? Regardless, our modern world is based on power hierarchies, particularly in government, industry, commerce, education, science, and religion, all of which are heavily influenced by the capitalist market system. The system is clearly flawed, which is not surprising to most of us.
There have been times in my life when days were extremely long and I was completely exhausted from work. That was something I enjoyed for a while. But my life inevitably returns to this default structure, covering the essentials, and I believe that right now that is enough.