Reality. Tried and Tested? - Philosophy

Reality. Tried and Tested?

Nadia Murtaza

Reality. (Please be aware I am not married nor do I have children, those aspects are purely on the basis of my own opinions and voyeurism)

Got your degree, boy meets girl, a beautiful ceremony followed by a house, 2.5 kids, a white picket fence, a cat and a dog. Springs at the lake, summers on the beach, autumns in the park, winters nestled by the fireplace. Steady job, nice car, and sizable savings account.

Check, check, check.

Then  what? Shouldn’t you be happy now? You did everything you were supposed to do, the perfect formula – where’s your gold star? In the institution that is the entry exam for “life as we know it” you scored top of the class.

But then, the cracks – the answer is not always 42.

Sitting staring at your handsome husband, or your pageant queen wife on your twin double seater matching sofa set…you are bored. You ask you partner, what they want in life – they roll their eyes and log back onto E! Online or walk to the kitchen to grab a bud to drink with the football.

Remember when you were in love? Were you? Or were you just looking? Looking, not seeing. Hearing and not listening. The next logical step followed the next logical step and before you knew it you were five pounds heavier and changing diapers. Where did the love go, where was the fire…was it ever there at all?

Ever look around when you’re in a location and see those “young” couples that can’t keep their hands off each other? Take a deep breath and play out in your mind how you started off that way – sexual escapades when you were practically strangers; oh yes – those were the days. Or were they? Will these two hormonal prime mates be you in a few months, a year? "They will fizzle, for sure.". Ever been at dinner and zoned out to the couple sitting behind you – they’ve been talking, laughing, smiling for hours – with out so much as touching each other. “Hmmm, must be a first date.” But what about when you find out they’ve been together for months, years, decades. “What the hell do they have to talk about?”

There.

You figure it out.

Your steady job. You make enough money to survive, perhaps support others. You do well, you’re expecting a promotion and bonus next year and you work for a well-respected worldwide corporation.

You get up in the morning, go to work, have a lunch break and are home in the evening. Routine, predictable and accountable.

You read about those people that move to the middle of nowhere and live off the land, idiots. You’ve seen/read Into The Wild – the guy is a kook, and he dies.

But, are they idiots? Really? Be honest, isn’t greed and money the route of all “evil” in essentially every culture of this world? What if you escaped it? Stopped living in this plastic paradise, throw yourself onto the grass, sand, snow and dig your palms deep into a world pre-industrialization, pre technology, pre media spheres – pre conference calls, pre pay cheques, pre annual bonus’s. Wake up and smell the air, let a lone the roses. Live simply, but for the first time in your life; use your mind for something far greater than profit and loss, use it for thinking.  Yeah..maybe that’s not such a bad idea and if you died, perhaps you would die with a warm heart as oppose to a freak Valium overdose you required just to get through the day.

Those crazy hippies selling beads on the beach don’t seem too stoned after all? Though, they probably are.

Oh…but doesn’t this break the formula? Imagine you fell in love and lived a life away from the world full of passion applicable to every aspect of your exsistance. That would be a dream…or would it.

Vacations  - the beach, the lake, the parks, the snowy mountains. All to escape. All to escape at an appointed time during the 12-month spans that are the years of our lives.

So wait, we only get to “run away” from our lives at certain times of year?

Further more, we look forward to “running away” from our lives?

Something definitely not right here, shouldn’t we be so happy with the paths we have carved for ourselves? We followed the formula….what could possibly be wrong….

In the desperate attempt to create the ideal situation, we have fallen to superficiality. Finding mates that we cannot get lost in the minds of, working jobs to survive and not to live, picking lifestyles that would suit a stereotype rather than ourselves. All to feel a part of a common society, of people that understand each other, people that walk to the same beat, people that have affairs, take medication for depression, fantasize about another life…not so much because they settled but because they didn’t take the time. The time to understand themselves with out the influence of the ground they stand on and succumbing to the voices shrieking from over their shoulders.

Think. It is your greatest talent. It is the most original thing about you. It can be dangerous and it can be joyous. Open your mind outside of the formula, outside of the advertisements, outside of whatever you were raised as. Open the lanes – they go all ways…. Then, then you’ve got a real shot at happiness.

I could take this further, I could write about it forever…but for now, I’ll give you time to think.