WHEN I WAS A YOUNG RAT
When I was young I believed the world was mine for the taking. Anything I wanted to be, anything I wanted to do, anything I wanted to imagine was mine to create, will, and mold for my own liking into a life that would be full of happiness, love and abundance. There was no mountain high enough, no galaxy far enough, no corner of the universe I could not reach with my imagination where I had the ability… power, to make it possible. I dreamed of becoming a great comic book artist, professional skateboarder, famous football quarterback, dramatic movie actor, concert saxophonist, and so on. The hard part was just to choose one, but why choose just one when I could be three or all of them at different times in my life? The ignorance of youth allows one to truly dream, there is no separation from what is possible in a dream and possible in reality. Nothing in the world could slow me down from becoming whatever I wanted to become, the world was a big piece of cheese and it was all mine.
WELCOME TO THE RAT RACE
SMACK!!! That is what it felt like as a new reality presented itself as I entered into the working world of making money, paying bills and trying to balance my dreams of my youth with working a 9-5 Monday through Friday. I was now an adult and this new reality did not feel good and it was uncomfortable, but I still did not let it discourage me from my dreams, it was simply a minor distraction, a hurdle to jump over to get to where I was going. Hurdle after hurdle I jumped, pitfall after pitfall I climbed, bullet after bullet I dodged and weaved my way through, knowing that just a little further and I shall see the light of my dreams come true. Thirty years later of chasing bits and pieces of cheese, crumbs that have led me down a path, that I began to realize that it is just a maze of confusion, a maze of distraction, designed to suck out the energy of one’s life. “We are all rats in race going nowhere!”, I exclaimed. Once I believed that LIFE was the path to freedom of mind, body and spirit, only to realize that DEATH from this LIFE maybe the only escape from this trap.
ESCAPING THE RAT TRAP
In between trying to keep my head above water there were moments were I was able to relax and take a break from all of the craziness. Those moments allowed me to breathe, contemplate and believe once again in the power of my true self, the self that I had forgotten. I began to understand that all of the feelings I felt as a child in my youth were not ignorant after all, they were the real reality of what is possible and what should be. For me the breaks came in the way of nature, physically putting myself into a beautiful area surrounded by oceans, mountains, forests, wide green meadows with wildflowers as far as the eye could see. These natural elements grounded me and gave me the ability to see once again how beautiful and precious this life is and could be for everyone. Yes, I had to return to the rat race to make a living, but now I understood that if I could take a break every once and awhile I could refresh and look at life from a different perspective. Not a true escape but a chance to take a break so that I wouldn’t.
THE REAL CHEESE
Everyday I walk a delicate balance between navigating through this rat race and taking a moment to refresh. Working and making money, paying the bills, taking care of societal responsibilities and then finding moments where you can escape for an hour or a day and if you're lucky a week or more. For me it is to be in nature, surfing a wave in the Pacific Ocean, hiking a mountain trail or stargazing at the Milky Way Galaxy in the middle of nowhere, but there are so many ways to refresh and to each his own, all over the world people are engaged with wonderful and beautiful ways to experience true life on this very special planet. The goal now is to Refresh Quest for these moments and in doing so I can find my way back to dreaming and believing that anything is really possible. This is the real cheese!