A big leap into the unknown
…And I have never felt better!
I did it. The red pill. All the way down the throat. I quit my job.
No more sabbatical year with a safety net of coming back to the golden cage. I am free for real and for good.
I have to tell you, a few months ago, that thought would have sent shivers down my spine and make me sweat out of fear. A year ago, it would have downright paralysed me. Today, I am not saying the scared little girl who is always afraid to end up living on the streets has disappeared, she is there since as long as I can remember and I guess she will always be part of me, but she only whispers from time to time, at moments when I am at my weakest or when my mind wanders and spins into a bad spiral. Those moments are rare! Some mornings when I wake up or some evenings before I fall asleep.
Most of the time now, I feel great. I can’t remember the last time I felt that way. Maybe it is because I am in love, maybe it is because I am free, maybe it is because the future is brighter than ever and full of projects that excite me like never before. Maybe it is all of it combined as if suddenly the stars were shining down on me.
I have no job, I still spend too much money even when I try to live a more economical life, I am uncertain about the inheritance story due to my father passing away in a way that may cause major financial dammage, I have no income whatsoever, I have expenses for an appartment I now own that I can’t even fully live in, I had to quit so I have no leaving package from a company that completely refused any negotiations, prepared to let me come back totally demotivated and slave for them until I tire and actually resign rather than reaching a common agreement after years of making money for them, I am applying to the unemployment agency. Hmmm… Yet I feel great! I feel amazing actually! I quit the rat race! I did it! I am living it!
And knowing where we are going, my partner and I, with beautiful projects to explore the different agricultures of the world, go meet the people around the globe who work hand in hand with the Earth to produce good food, to set-up a farm-B&B where we can combine our love for cultivating the earth and cooking its fruits to share it with other people, to live at Nature’s rythm… Well, having a goal that is also your dream and having the chance to start living it, what is there not to feel great about!
Recently a dear friend of mine, who now left for India to pursue and realise her own dream, introduced me to actual meditation. I knew the concept and the philosophy behind but had never much attempted it myself practically. The meditation theme was “Loving kindness”. It gradually expended from yourself, to someone you love, to someone you feel neutral about, to someone you dislike until the whole humanity. The progressive expansion in the cycle was meant to raise the difficulty I believe. What I found astonishing when I did it is that I found it extremely difficult to extend warm and loving feeling to myself, much more so than to someone I love or feel neutral about or to the whole humanity. Not that I think I particularly dislike myself but feeling good with yourself and sending yourself loving feelings are actually two pretty different things as I found out. Passing over the reasons why this is so which are still puzzling me to this day, today, I thought “You did good! You found the courage against your materialistic phobia to seize your own life and get out of the system!”. I have to say it made me proud of myself and so I felt a tiny bit of what I should have done during this meditation.
A good friend told me this weekend after we discussed my new situation and the various projects ahead: “Well you are taking your life in your own hands now.” I was touched by his realisation and it rang deeply inside myself too. Yes I am. Finally. No more floating around and taking the easy opportunities for a career in line with what I was always prepared to do, no more living up to the standard of someone else who wasn’t even asking for it, no more constraining myself to codes and systems and values which don’t fit with mine. I can chose. And so I do.
Freedom it is!
