Wake up!

"Wake up! How many people really know that they are alive!" So bellowed Jim Morrison in a live concert recording of The Doors in my youth, thirty years after the recording took place.

The appeal of this sermonizing from a Rock God, lay in all what was unspoken in my life as a sixteen year old. The unquestioned necessity to get a job ASAP. In my household, the issue was making a living, full stop. Questions about fulfillment were never even discussed. The music raised the questions no one was asking.

The question about human fulfillment is a difficult one, for it creates uncertainty. There is the possibility that you will start working against other peoples' expectations.

Maybe the factory job is not what you want to do with your life. Nor is the marriage and the 2.4 children. Perhaps family and friends will resent the fact that you even dare question the ways in which they are living. Wanting to do something else may be viewed as a veiled form of criticism.

Eighteen years on and I finally know what I want to do. It will take a little time to prepare the funds to jump. I have to hold back from the temptation to escape every weekend. I will hold firm, knowing that in a short period of time - I will have finally started living my own life.