MSG

I just finished watching an extraordinary movie called The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. It isn't the first time I've seen it, but one of those movies I can watch over and over again. This time, however, I paid more attention to a lot of the themes in the movie and they struck me more so now than it had before. Possibly, because my job is unbearable at times and I have to constantly think about Joshua and my life with him before I walk out the door with my middle finger waving in the air. I want a simpler more meaningful way of living.

The movie is about a group of British men and women in retirement age who venture to a retirement community in India. Each of them searching for something different. For some, just a change of life and others to find something they thought they had lost back home. In any case, some find what they needed and for others they find unexpected things that makes them realize that maybe this isn't the end...but rather a new beginning for them. Now I'm clearly not any way close to retirement, but what I crave, dream of, and fear is change. Despite the fact that lots of changes are happening in my personal life, marriage, saving for a future I wasn't sure was in the cards for me, etc...I'm lacking real living. I go to work, workout, chat with my fiancé, have dinner, go to bed...Monday through Friday the same routine. I'm bored with life.

I want to experience life the way each one of us should experience life. That is by embracing things around us that are new and by not per say welcoming new experiences, but having the strength to acknowledge that new experiences, new ways of thinking, opening ourselves to the possibility of learning from other cultures...may indeed breathe new life in our beings. Accepting when things go awry and laughing at those moments, hoping that one bad experience won't deter us from experiencing more. The way I look at life is this...when something really bad happens to us, instead of closing ourselves off and letting our spirit wither away, let it enlighten us. Let it push us closer to whatever it is we search for. If things were always perfect we would just drift through life without ever bettering ourselves because we wouldn't know that we could.

There are times when I feel as though I'm alone in my way of thinking. As I write, I don't even know if I make any sense. There are times at work where I feel as though I must be speaking a different language. That what seems sensible to me does not to others. I fear one day I will lose my job because I'll allow my integrity to takeover and I'll say how I truly feel... to those who just love throwing people under busses and believe that I am more or less ignorant because I am younger than them. To those who are just rotten disrespectful people. I just want to take Joshua and runaway. Leave the country and accept new ways of living that are far less complicated than what we allow ourselves to experience.

This is not living. I want vibrant color and tantalizing flavor. Not gray and bland with a touch of MSG. I want to go to a place of work where people are respected, not made to feel like there opinion doesn't matter. I want to live a life where I'm making change. Where I'm making a difference in someone's life. Not where when I come to work my heart races and I feel like I may have a panic attack. I'm a dreamer. I've been this way since I was a child. I've never understood the true meaning of living. It sounds strange I suppose but we are given this precious gift of being alive, a gift that at any moment can be taken from us and yet most of us waltz through life with blinders on. Taking all that we have for granted. Say you get the opportunity at the end of your life to look back on it...don't you want to feel as though you did something in life that meant something?...I do.

It's all a facade. Is living proving to the world your worth something because of all you own? Because of the ladder you climbed, never minding the people you broke to get there? Why do we constantly have to prove ourselves to anyone? Prove something to yourself instead. Do more that does not just make you feel good but makes you a better person. Challenge yourself ...take a different road. Do something that betters the world. All our lives would be better if we start to walk away from everything that keeps us from what truly matters in this life.