Fork in the Road: Retrain Ur Brain

Right now I am facing the most transitional period of my life that I have every faced. I say this because I am a person who has always known what I've wanted and exactly where I am headed despite the many, many obstacles that I have and continue to face. Recently however, it has been very different. I am not nearly the same person that I was even just a year ago. If I were to take a time machine back to December 31st, 2007 and have a run in with me then, I wouldn't even recognize that person. Correction. I am the same person, I just have grown more into myself. Unfortunately, I would think that growing into yourself means that you gain a better vision of what you want and where you want to go but I'm learning that is not the case.

I feel that most people in the world, no matter who they are, their status in life, etc, are programmed from all the institutions that they are born under. This includes our governments, schooling, family, and jobs. It even seeps into the groups that we identify with such as race or gender. I sometimes wonder "If I could create my own world, what would the people look like, what religion would they worship, how would life be set, what values would be accepted, what traditions would be practiced?" After asking myself and a small handful of others this question, I realized that there is a good posibility that most people are living contradictions.

People need to start thinking of themselves as their own society and really truly learn to govern themselves. They need to create their own laws, their own culture (i.e. your personal sense of style), and promote their own set of values. I think as a person I have effectively done this because I am pretty well grounded and I have the strength of my convictions. However, I feel that I am also a victim of what I will from this point call institutionalism.

Even though I have a uniqueness and free-spiritedness of my own, I still am a person who has followed the straight-n-narrow. I have followed the typical path of what society deems as "the norm" and have stuck to the age old rule "you do well in school, you will go far in life". But the reality of it is, college teaches you nothing about life. If anything it hinders it. College promotes innovation but they put caps on how you innovate. College wants you to explore your options but the exploration is very limited.

It is obvious to me that the path that I have chosen is going to put me somewhere I'd rather not be. We are taught to shoot big....but what is "big" anyways? To most people, it is to earn a degree and work for a top company in your field. I must say, that I have had the priviledge to work at a top company and let me tell you, there is nothing big about it. No wonder there is a small group of the American population that embrace the downfall of the corporate robot.

I always thought that given my hard work, the hustle would eventually stop. But the truth is, that if you are a person who is really about something, the hustle will never stop. There will always be something that needs to get done. There is always opportunity to explore. There is always an opportunity for change. You stop hustling, you stop growing....financially, spiritually, emotionally, and mentally.

I have decided that I no longer want to work or care to work for a Fortune 500 company. Most of them are morally bankrupt anyways. It's not what I want to spend my life doing. My calling lies elsewhere. I have so many avenues that I can take but as right now I feel very directionless. I also feel that I have lost my sense of place (I'll expand on this at a later time). I figured that in my search for a job upon graduation, I was not going to accept the so-called biggest and brightest offer. Rather, I'd take a small step, and focus on something as small as location. I feel like I have been programmed to think that money wins...or even career opportunity wins...but, if I was to run my own world, people would value the quality of life over the quality of work. If that is notion that lives within the center of my core, then that is a notion that I need to start living my life by.

Until I can regain my sense of direction, I'll be patiently waiting next to the stop sign in the fork in the road.