I found a note I wrote on September 19, 2013.
As promised on previous post, here goes:
I’m taking 2 minutes on my bike ride to work to write this, as thoughts are coming to me.
It’s funny the perception and mindset that people in society have. OF how should one live life. How we have to follow “the norm”, “the rules”. You birth, you go to school, you get a career, put into a ‘retirement fun’, pay bills, get married, buy a house, get kids, work crazy hard to make money only to pay more bills, and maybe if you’re lucky and you have a really good job, you can afford to go on the only week or two vacation you have in the year.
As I’m biking to work this morning (since I now have no car), this supposedly ‘good life’ is not even remotely close to what I’m living. Since I’m not the perfect model of society’s image, some people look at me and think, ‘poor Janine, she has to bike to work, or walk to do errands. Poor her, no cars. Pitty, she’s only a waitress after 6 years of university. When will she grow up?’
To you, who think that- when’s the last time you took 20 minutes of your day to look at your surroundings? To breathe this fresh air we live in? To see, to really see, the vibrant colors of grass, trees, flowers? To listen to birds flying away?
On my bike ride to work this morning, I took the time to do that, as you probably rushed through traffic, swearing at the car who cut you off or impatiently looked at your clock while the light was red.
But for 20 minutes, I took time to appreciate life. Even if I’m running late … I can peddle faster and still be grateful to my surroundings. I’m smiling, and I clearly see you are not.
I had a “career”. I had a business. I left them. It’s a choice I made. Those were my careers at that time. I will probably never have a 1 career for my whole life. It’s not who I am. I believe life is all about experiences. I am living a lot of experiences. Short careers. It’s a choice.
But you know what? I may not have a car, a house, a work desk on the 15th story of a high tech building. But yet, I am the happiest person I’ve ever been.
I smile for no reason. I dance when I’m walking and I sing without a care in the world if someone’s listening.
Now, I’m not perfect. There’s some stuff missing in my life I wish I had. But they are not things. I wish my mom was still here on earth to be able to sing along with. I wish I had someone to cuddle to every night. But I am still happy without the car, the surround sound and the house.
So, if growing up is getting a highly paid job you work 9 hours a day, to buy a house and a car and have a same routine day in and day out and not have time to bike to work and smell the skunk, all in the detriment of loosing my happiness, then I am not giving in to the rules of society. Don’t tell me to grow up. If that is your belief system and you’re following a map which society has got you locked in, then I say you grow up. Because when I look back in 20 years, I will have experienced a lot and have seen the real beauty in life while you wished you had spent more time smelling the flowers.
