Living Life

Living Life

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” Henry David Thoreau from Walden

I began living life with a purpose about eight years ago. Prior to this it was as though I was just floating through this world and waiting for the next. You see I was not living life to the fullest instead I was just barely living. I think it had been this way for a long time. There was a time when I really had a purpose in life but I was almost too young to remember.

Today I am living a full life. This was not always the case. As far back as I can remember I was a shy, submissive loner. My father used to tell me that I was like an ostrich and that I should go bury my head in the sand. My father was right. I wanted to be like the others kids and my siblings. They were always playing together and enjoying each other’s company. I liked the fact that I could be equally content by myself. I enjoyed going out into the woods alone and reading. I valued this time to myself. Eventfully, the pressure to conform became too strong. I started to doubt my solitary childhood life. Like Thoreau I did not want to die without feeling like I had lived. The only way I felt that I could accomplish this was to crawl out from under my introverted rock and walk into the sunlight of socialization. This was actually the beginning of a long lonely journey back to where I started.

As I grew both in age and in the communal sense, I began to struggle more and more. In high school I traded in reading and writing, because that was the trademark of a loner, for senseless non educational vices. I picked up smoking because being a smoker made me a part of a group. I hung out with the drug users and bullies, mostly to avoid being one of their victims, and felt that I was living pretty well. My father would tell me that I would never amount to anything especially if I chose not to have tons of friends. On the inside I was more lonely and longed for my little solitary forest called “Me.” I knew that I needed to suppress that feeling. I told myself to hang in there that this whole social life thing would get better.

After high school, I joined a variety of volunteer organizations in order to find my place in the world of groups. I tried college but failed miserably. This was large in part to two things. First was my low confidence (this goes back to my father’s continuous negative comments). Second I was still more worried about trying to fit in. I worked full time and got married young. I married because I falsely believed that being single and alone was the worst thing in the world. Needless to say, a marriage like that could never work, and I found myself alone again. This time though, I was happy.

“A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate between land and sky”

I used this time of being alone to begin analyzing my life. I began spending more and more time at my favorite place to get away, the James River. I would run a few miles (by myself), then lie on the rocks and stare at the sky. I would think to myself what it would be like to find someone who was just like me. Someone who would happily share in my joy of solitariness yet would also be there when I needed to not be alone. My quiet reflective time on the river was great, until the day I almost drowned there. My near drowning experience was a wake up call to both the life that I was longing for, and to the way that I was throwing away my life.
I analyzed my career. I also pondered my education. I realized that the time for trying to fit in was over. I ignored the little voice of low self esteem and began the journey back to my confident inner forest. I started to tune out negativity and I focused on living. I quit trying to fit in. I stopped all of the useless vices that I had picked when I was trying to be social. I enrolled in junior college, and began to seek out promotion at work. Along the way I met my true love who happened to be the perfect match I was seeking. That was about eight years ago when this return pilgrimage began.

“It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.”

Three years ago my agonizing journey had finally come to an end. My days of traveling through the world of trying to be something I wasn’t, were over. I had returned to my forest. Once I had returned to this place, I got promoted, married, became an “A” student, a rather assertive leader, and am quite pleased with spending time alone or with my wife and daughter. This is where I truly am living my life to the fullest. Occasionally my wife manages to pull me out of the house and engage in social activities. For me, being social today is nowhere near as painful as it had been. I know who I am and where I am going. This new sense of confidence allows me to talk and move about more freely in the social world. Still, I can count all of my friends on one finger. Oh, and as for my father, he could not be more proud. You see he was and is a loner like me. I never realized this until I finally put all of that trying to fit in stuff behind me. Today my dad is the first person on a very short list of friends, and he tells me all the time how proud he is of me.