Boundaries

Lying here in bed, staring at my closet doors which are covered with cityscape posters, it hits me just how big this world is.  We get so caught up in our individual day-to-day lives that our whole perception of the world automatically shrinks.  We become so absorbed in the tasks in front of us that we forget to take the time to stop and consider life beyond the boundaries of the fence that society keeps us trapped behind.  We spend our days as slaves to the clock - always rushing and scheduling and planning to meet its tick-tock of approval.  We book every minute of our lives with something that we feel will better us in some way.  Maybe the minutes are spent working to make money so we can provide for ourselves and improve our financial status.  Or maybe we meet up with friends and/or colleagues to maintain our social status.  Perhaps we spend the extra time at the gym to keep our physical figure healthy and in shape so we can hold onto any shred of self-confidence we have left, and gain an advantage in the competitive world of dating and romance.

There are so many things that we spend our time doing, but the one thing that I know for a fact we don't spend enough of our time doing...is appreciating - how vast the world is, how much it has to offer.  And most of all we don't take the time to appreciate the struggles that every single other human being on this planet is facing.  Instead we are too concerned with our own problems - which is only natural I suppose (survival of the fittest and all).  But seriously, how much more selfish could we be?  Even when we go out with friends, we say it's because we want to "catch up" and "see how they're doing".  Bullshit.  We just want someone to listen to our own grievances and to make us feel socially accepted and less alone in the world - ultimately it is ourselves that we are looking out for.

That's another thing - for a world with 7 billion people, there are far too many of us who are lonely.  I can't quite fathom how this is possible.  How can there be so many of us who feel like we have no one - like no one admires us - like all we do is manage to push people away - like we always say the wrong things - like we don't belong.  7 billion people.  And we can't find just one who actually wants to spend time with us?  Someone who, when they haven't heard from you in a few days, actually makes the effort to keep in touch?  Someone who admires you and appreciates not only your virtues, but your little quirks and faults as well?  Someone who will embrace the dark and twisty, rather than run from it?  Someone who can love you as a whole?  Maybe we just haven't looked hard and far enough yet.  Like I said, we don't realize just how massive this world is.  Maybe that person - your person - is in San Francisco, driving across the Golden Gate Bridge...right now...as I write this.  Or maybe in France - Paris - marveling beneath the awe-inspiring architecture of the Eiffel Tower.  Maybe in Seattle, overlooking the city from the top of the Space Needle.  Perhaps in Chicago, or Boston, or Sydney.  Or maybe even right here in New York.  But what does it take to find this person?  We can't all just pack up our lives and travel the world at our leisure.  Society has us too confined and restricted - suffocating our potential with its pillow of expectations.  We need money, we need foundation, we need responsibilities.  This is what society has taught us.  Happiness...comes last.  And desire...gets buried.  Think about it.  Do you realize how many of the things we do in life, we do out of society's requirement...because it is what is expected of us, and because it is what everyone else has done before us?  We are sheep...just following the flock.  We go to work day after day to perform a job that most of us hate.  Why?  Because we need the money and the opportunity was there.  And since we need money for everything - since it is urgent that we earn as much of it as we can in as short of a time frame as possible - we feel that we don't have the time to waste pursuing a career that we can truly enjoy.  We need the money that is fast and easy.

What else do we do for society? We go to school for years and years, wasting our lives away behind textbooks filled with information that crowds inside our brains for a semester and then immediately vanishes once the tests have been completed in order to make room for the next round of seemingly meaningless facts.  Why do we waste our time and money on information that is rarely retained?  Because society has taught us that without a college education, you are no one.  But wouldn't we be much better off if we could use all that wasted time and energy to venture out into the world and gain the knowledge and understanding we need through our own personal and physical experiences?  As a global population we could be so much more! - more cultured, more knowledgeable, more open-minded, ...more alive!  We all have dreams - to travel to certain places, to meet certain people, to live certain lives.  Maybe one day we'll find the place where dreams and reality collide.