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When asked about what surprised him most about humanity, the Dalai Lama answered;
“We sacrifice our health in order to make wealth then we sacrifice our wealth in order to get back our health”.
We are so anxious about what would happen in the future that we don’t get to enjoy the present. The result being that we don’t live in the present or the future, we end up living and feeling like we are never going to die and then die never having truly lived.
Ellen Goodman said;
“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for in order to get the job that you need to pay for the clothes and the car and the home that’s empty all day just so you can afford to live in it”.
We live in a world where day dreams are more common than dream jobs, where money clouds our search for meaning in search for profit.
They say that the most powerful prison is one when we don’t even know that we are locked up. You see, our suits become our uniforms, our cufflinks become our hand cuffs. Our ties are the chains, our bosses are like the guards and well, our office cubicles become our cells.
The only thing we excel at is microsoft and that becomes our only powerpoint.
We spend our whole day trying to get to our work on time but then spend all our time thinking about work.
We live in a world where we constantly wish our out of work days could be permanent, we wish our mail inbox could be empty. We live in a world where our linkedin resumes are more interesting than our actual jobs and our profile pictures are the happiest we’ve been in a long time.
We live in a world where the quest to live a fake life has become more important to us than actually living.
We live for the weekend but then end up feeling weak and each day that passes we ask ourselves, could Mondays be more meaningful, could Tuesdays be less torture, could Wednesdays be any less stressful, could Thursdays be more productive and could Fridays be any less tasking. All we do is complain all week long but still end up doing the same things everyday, isn’t that the definition of being in chains?
Even when we are away from our desks, our minds are still there with the check lists in our heads. We stuff ourselves into our work clothes, then the buses, the cars, the trains and then we finally get caged in our offices only to wait five days to live again.
We don’t have time to eat dinner together then we end up eating out of take-away boxes. We spend so much time most times watching the TV not realising that the TV box takes away our time. We eat on the go, meet on the go, we even sleep on the go and wonder why everyone cheats on the go.
We are often told that what it actually means to be hardworking is to spend 9-8 everyday working our asses out and we tell ourselves the lie that it is fine if we don’t get enough time with the person we love even if it took us long to find them…we always feel they have no choice but to stay since we are working so hard to provide for them. And because most times you come home late from work and she smiles and says “Honey you are welcome” doesn’t actually mean she’s OK.
All these isn’t normal. We have to reclaim our lives because right now we can all barely survive. We do the same thing everyday, again and again and call it a life.
Now imagine this for a moment; what if Oprah listened to her haters and doubters? What if Steve Jobs settled for a real job? What if the Rock never broke through depression? What if Ellen never overcame the bullying?
Imagine a world where everyone lived their passion? We would be better people, we will be better partners and we would be better parents. See I have ever seen a strong person with an easy past. The tough pasts are actually what makes us stronger. Like they always say “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” and so scaling through your past should actually build you and make you a better and a stronger person than you were before.
We all have a passion. We have that genius inside of us. We all have that potential. I know we have all been in that position where we feel confused and seriously lacking mission but then I ask myself- at the end of my life, what will I regret? And the answer is clear…The pain of regret far outweighs the pain of risk. So next time when you are going through challenges, just remember this; A winner is just a loser who tried one more time.
Learn to live each day as it passes, learn to take those risks, learn to say “I love you” to those who truly matters the most to you everyday, learn to lend a helping hand to that friend and beggar who is in need because for each day that passes, we must give account and what a waste will it be to be full of life and at the end realise you never truly lived.
