Ever have a dream where a person you haven't seen in 10-20 years makes an appearance and you wake up asking, "WTF?!?" This happened to me recently, where a high school friend of mine I haven't seen in 15 years appeared and I was wondering why. Granted, in the Facebook age, I have to think it's more common today than it was in yesteryear for a friend from 10-20 years ago to make an appearance in a dream. No matter how long ago it was you saw him/her face-to-face, they're seemingly always on your Facebook newsfeed.
The last time I saw this person was roughly 15 years ago, so we'll say 2004. I was 23 years old, a year removed from brain surgery, about to earn my bachelor's degree, with a world of possibilities ahead of me. He and I were fairly close between the ages of 17 and 19, but then he kind of disappeared on me. I had never known why. While we lived different lives - me invested in school and him invested in partying - we still managed to have fun, as we were both pretty big into the rock-concert scene. Then one day as I was driving home after getting gas, he spotted me on the highway and followed me back. We chilled, got caught up, he got drunk, and then he finally filled me in on why he disappeared for multiple years out of the seeming blue.
He said: "It seemed like you were a homebody, like you never wanted to go out. You were busy studying and didn't want to live life. I decided to give up on you and start living life."
Interestingly, when I inquired about how he was living life, he said, "Driving around, doing drugs, going to concerts, sleeping around, finding myself."
Then when I asked about finding himself, he told me the exact same thing he said the last time I had seen him, several years earlier: "I wanna be a mechanic, so I'm going to go to school to do that."
While he tried to invite me back into his world, I passed, but what he said made me reflect and has apparently stuck with me.
There's no one right way to live life. This is what he seemed to contend and he couldn't be more wrong. Sure, he has every right to live life the way he wants to live it, but that doesn't mean everyone else should live life in the same manner. I'm sorry, but living a promiscuous, drug-addled, seemingly directionless life doesn't appeal to me. That doesn't make him or me right or wrong. We're just different people living different lives. How dull would the world be if we all lived similar lives?
Whether you travel for a living, collect people's trash, or punch in numbers on a keyboard, live life the way you want to live it and don't let anyone tell you that you're doing it wrong. Happiness comes in all shapes and sizes. Attain that and not only are you livin' life, you're lovin' life.
The last time I saw this person was roughly 15 years ago, so we'll say 2004. I was 23 years old, a year removed from brain surgery, about to earn my bachelor's degree, with a world of possibilities ahead of me. He and I were fairly close between the ages of 17 and 19, but then he kind of disappeared on me. I had never known why. While we lived different lives - me invested in school and him invested in partying - we still managed to have fun, as we were both pretty big into the rock-concert scene. Then one day as I was driving home after getting gas, he spotted me on the highway and followed me back. We chilled, got caught up, he got drunk, and then he finally filled me in on why he disappeared for multiple years out of the seeming blue.
He said: "It seemed like you were a homebody, like you never wanted to go out. You were busy studying and didn't want to live life. I decided to give up on you and start living life."
Interestingly, when I inquired about how he was living life, he said, "Driving around, doing drugs, going to concerts, sleeping around, finding myself."
Then when I asked about finding himself, he told me the exact same thing he said the last time I had seen him, several years earlier: "I wanna be a mechanic, so I'm going to go to school to do that."
While he tried to invite me back into his world, I passed, but what he said made me reflect and has apparently stuck with me.
There's no one right way to live life. This is what he seemed to contend and he couldn't be more wrong. Sure, he has every right to live life the way he wants to live it, but that doesn't mean everyone else should live life in the same manner. I'm sorry, but living a promiscuous, drug-addled, seemingly directionless life doesn't appeal to me. That doesn't make him or me right or wrong. We're just different people living different lives. How dull would the world be if we all lived similar lives?
Whether you travel for a living, collect people's trash, or punch in numbers on a keyboard, live life the way you want to live it and don't let anyone tell you that you're doing it wrong. Happiness comes in all shapes and sizes. Attain that and not only are you livin' life, you're lovin' life.
Comments
Post a Comment