Life On Hold

As a young adult still doing post-secondary education I am often reminded that "real life" starts after graduation. While I have always liked to think that this is a faulty premise I recently figured out, through some introspection, that I have indeed been treating my life like it is on hold. Waiting for the real part to start, treating life like I have time to practice. I don't know why I did, but am sure it has to do with protecting myself. I stopped dating, put projects on hold, postponed doing things that I wanted to, all because I think I might be scared to actually do them. Doesn't seem like me but it makes sense.

I told myself a couple of years ago that I wanted to see the world. Live in some odd locations, see the tourist spots and go down the unbeaten path. For this reason I also told myself I didn't want to get involved with someone. I didn't want someone to hold me back, and I knew that if I was dating someone at the time I left then my heart would be torn between achieving my dreams and living with one. I didn't want to hurt someone else and I didn't want to hurt myself. I wanted to avoid the risk so I preemtively stopped myself from even considering it. I put my heart on hold.

I wanted to start a couple of online projects, all of which I have stalled on. I pick away at them as I can but have not put any considerable energy into making them happen. I have done this because I know if I do that they will either be a nice success, requiring further energy and time, or be an utter failure and a huge disappointment to me. I don't put in the time because either way the result will be hard to take in. I do it for self defense because the dream of them is so grand to me and I am acutely aware that the reality might not be quite so grand.

I share these examples because my attention of them was brought into view recently. I realized that the world I was creating around me was in fact not the world I wanted and yet it was of my own doing. I set myself up in a box that I could make sense of, a world I felt in control of; but the box was holding me back. With these constraints in my life I was failing at the game. I told myself it was practice, and that it could wait, but I felt fragmented. Sometimes it takes an event or a person to come in your life to help you realize that right now is the only time we have to live. Tomorrow is just a figment of the imagination. It doesn't exist until it happens and if you live thinking - believing - that it will lead or bring the life you want, then you are setting yourself up for failure. You are depriving the world of an integral part; YOU.

Life can't be broken into tiny, divisible parts. It isn't neat and tidy, and by trying to make it so you separate yourself from the possibility of life. By putting up these barriers, by setting up controls, you cut yourself off from chance. Tomorrow may never come, but right here and now is for sure. It is the only sure thing in life. It is the only thing that wont let you down. Here and now will always be here until it isn't anymore and then it wont matter. There is no practice round, you get one shot at it. One opportunity to the make the most of. Set yourself free.