2:55 AM

How do we find our own happiness if we don’t yet know how the world works? Does everyone settle?

I often look at my parents lives.

My mother is a movement/dance therapist at a mental hospital and she loves it. She always wanted to work in a mental health field and danced for her own pleasure, but this allows her to combine the two. She seems happy, with her job at least.

My father is a clinician who works with several group homes; each housing teen aged boys with behavioral problems. Essentially he is a behavior analyst. He loves his job and the kids he works with.

I think its funny that they both work in the mental heath field. They were predetermined to have psychologically confused children.

I think we are held back by our desires. We see our future exactly how we want it and find no other way of life acceptable. Therefore we fear that, in the end, we will have to settle for a life we don’t want, because our dreams are too difficult to live.

My sister wants to live a life of leisure; never lifting a finger in a real job. She wants to be able to travel the world and live in the city and have health care but doesn’t want to ever get a job. Thats a problem right from the start because its impossible to never have a job. Unless you come from money, but even then someone had to work for your family to inherit all of that money.

I think once she understands that she can get jobs without having a permanent career, she will be better off and have an understanding that she can balance travel and desires with earning money and doing what everyone else does to stay healthy.

But I don’t think its a question of when she figures it out, when we figure it out. Rather its a question of how. How do you learn the balance of life while you’re living it? Time is runny towards me, and all I want to do is run in the other direction, to age backwards and hope that time doesn’t catch up until i’ve solved the great mystery of the world. For people who have plans that don’t involve working day in and day out, how do we live?

Right here we are setting ourselves up for a disappointing life, if we think we must settle for a life we don’t really want.