So, I quit my daily job!

Margaret Young

“Often people attempt to live their lives backwards.
They try to have more of what they want so they 
 will be happier.
The way it actually works is the reverse.
You first must be who you are, then love what you do,
in order to have what you want.”
~ Margaret Young

So, I quit my daily job and I had no concrete plans of what I have to do next.  For years I have always been dreaming of freedom - as if I know what this one word really means! During one of my travels I've witness how simple life can be for some people.  They sit by the porch of their house waiting for the sun to get to its peak and their stomach complaining it is time for another meal, food arrived fresh from the sea, all you have to do was boil water, put the fish and some spices, salt and onions to taste and with that one of the basic need of the family was met.  At sundown, it was pretty much the same.  At night when the sun is gone and the stars are out, one could witness the beauty of the sky when you can actually see that there are stars outshining each other without the bright posts competing in your eyes.  I thought to myself, what have I missed all these years? I for one feels naked when I don't have my mobile phone or an internet connection and here I am wishing a life I never knew existed.

Me Shopping

In the chase of social status and material comforts I traded off my normal lifestyle to a one with longer hours and working over the weekends.  For years I have been absent during special family gatherings and every holidays there is written in the calendar.  To them I was not existent. I lived in a suitcase all the years, trying to define permanence in a constant moving career. Traveling constantly for job and leisure and posting my photos on facebook to indicate and tell the world that I chose a better lifestyle.

My tent on a deserted island!

But I realized that my job, although it paid me well, was not making me happy.   Everyday, I sit in my office trying to find meanings of my unhappiness. My job was not taking me the way that I wanted to go.  It was taking me in the opposite direction, toward a life of worries and obligation rather than one of freedom and fulfillment. So, I quit my daily job! Right now, I realized that it doesn't matter what you do as long as you are doing something you love to do.  Now I am planning and preparing myself to do what I love to do, traveling! At least before I reach 40, I would have done round the world trip! :)

What are we afraid of?

Are you afraid of you? 

Autophobia is an abnormal and persistent fear of being alone.  Autophobics often worry about being ignored and unloved.  These days, we're probably all a little autophobic.  How often do we define ourselves in terms of others?  we're popular, we're respected, we're well liked, we're leaders, we're team players.  We become dependent on others for a definition of ourselves.

Many of us have never spent any significant period of time alone.  We go from our families to college to roommates and into relationships.  We've become good at dealing with others but often at the expense of learning how to deal with ourselves.  And in today's interconnected, technology-driven landscape (e-mail, text messaging, and cell phones), we can easily avoid that sort of internal dialogue and introspection that forces self-reflection and realization.

Like getting a pet, dating becomes another form of insulating ourselves from being alone.  When we date in the meantime, it's often because we're afraid of dealing with ourselves; we have lost the ability to judge ourselves without the intermediation of others' judgments of us.

So true, I didnt write this article but I would want to share this to people I know that are afraid of themselves!