Life is funny, or not, depending on your perspective. When we are young and dumb, we live life. As we get older and wiser, most of us let life live us. Maybe this isn’t your story, but it is ours.
Think about it. When you first got your drivers license, if you were anything like me, you drove. Anywhere. Everywhere. For any reason. Driving was freedom, in a metal box, with rubber tires. Roll the windows down, fresh air smacking you in the face. Living life.
Fast forward a few years. Your vehicle becomes a tool. Not a toy that ushers in euphoric freedom, but a tool that ushers you to into captivity (yes, that is a bit dramatic, but stick with me here). Example? Rush hour traffic…
“Rush hour traffic”, or as it should be called here in Colorado, “rush 24 hour traffic” is blerg. It is the opposite of freedom. In my opinion, there should be an amendment to the Constitution that bans driving more than 5 miles per hour under the speed limit. I don’t care what the circumstances are. Some one vomiting on the side of the road? Who cares?!? Someone pulled over? Change lanes and keep on keeping on. What do you expect to see? Two feet of water puddling up on the highway because of poor engineering and terrible drainage? Floor it! If you don’t, your are guaranteed to hydro-lock your car. If you go fast enough, you could hydroplane right over the top (don’t try this at home…)! What about the inalienable right to drive the speed limit people?!? There are few things more infuriating than driving down the highway and passing a 65 mph speed limit sign going 5… miles… per… hour… It is the antithesis of freedom… A perfect example of how life starts living you…
Then consider the truth that in most cases, if you are stuck in traffic, you are headed to a somewhere you don’t really want to go. Recent research ( link ) shows that 50% of us here in the United States aren’t satisfied with our jobs. That is 50% of people who actually have jobs. But it gets worse. There are roughly 95,000,000 people who could be working, choosing not to work (link ) . I assume that these people were not even polled in the first research I mentioned. Regardless, their actions, of leaving the work force, speak loud. So many people are thinking that there has got to be something more.
Let me be clear here, I am not advocating leaving the work force and becoming a leech. Anyone who knows me knows that I believe in busting tail to get things done. I will not live off of other people’s hard work. I’ve only asked for help financially twice in my adult life. And I hated every second of it. Don’t get me wrong, many gracious people have helped us along the way, and we are very grateful, but we have done everything in our power to not ever have to ask.
What I am saying is this. Too many of us are letting life live us.
Why do we relinquish control of our most precious gift, our life? I am no expert, I only call things as I see them. This is what I see.
Our family has called Douglas County, Colorado, home for about 3 years. Douglas County is the 5th wealthiest county in the United States ( link ). In those 3 years, I have observed. And while I don’t know it for a fact, my sense is this. We have a ton of people trying to appear to be “more than” they are. By that I mean, many people are very likely living beyond their means to project a image of themselves that they think others will be impressed by. Likely swimming, or drowning, in debt. Letting life live them.
To keep up with the financial strain of the life they are portraying, they do “whatever it takes” to make sure the bills get paid. Or at least paid enough to satisfy the debtors. But at what cost to the family, the person, or people involved? And life begins to take more control.
I fully acknowledge the other side of the coin, because we have lived it. There are plenty of people doing “whatever it takes” just to pay the bills, but not because of debt. Just because life is expensive. And sometimes our jobs don’t cut it.
When Kari and I first got married, the following was our reality.
We spent the money we got from our wedding on our first months rent. Most of the money came from the money dance with Kari. We were fortunate to have any money left, because I think we had to pay people to dance with me. The net turned out positive, which was nice. But like I said, it went to rent.
I would have to call Kari to see if I could put gas in my truck. To get to work. Understand, if I didn’t work, I didn’t get paid, and we would not be able to buy gas anyway. Yet I still had to make sure I didn’t put too much gas in. We were unwilling to go into debt anymore, for any reason. Well, almost any reason.
We would eat out. Once a month. At Wendy’s. Off the value menu. Max, 2 items. $4 plus gas.
Our first Christmas we capped our gift spending to each other. I think it was $10 max. We were so excited to video our first Christmas as a married couple, but watching it later turned out to not be very exciting. I think it took 2 minutes to unwrap our gifts. I am pretty sure the pig and pug, our animals at the time, took up half of those 2 minutes. You get the picture.
We didn’t have garbage service at our first house. I took our garbage to work in the back of my truck.
Never the less we pushed on, but life was still living us. We were making decisions to get us out of that mess, but life was still living us.
That’s what motivates me, even today. I don’t like being told what to do. By people or circumstances. I don’t accept life living me. It may look different for everyone, and I am no one’s judge. Many people can live their life while doing the big company, corporate thing. Many others can’t. Many people can live their life on next to nothing. Many others can’t.
The point of all this is not to convince you, or myself, that any one way of life is better than another. All of us are different. We were created with desires and purpose that, when lived out, lead to satisfaction. Living life means we do “whatever it takes” to fulfill that purpose. When one purpose is complete, you move on to the next. The challenge then becomes “simple”. Grasp the purpose.
To take back life, we have to understand our purpose. Our family firmly believes in the Divine and therefore we find purpose through the Divine. We find immense satisfaction in our non-profit outreach, Naked Hands. But we refuse to take a salary from Naked Hands, which means that it is only a part of our purpose.
This epoch48 adventure is partially about the adventure, but mostly about finding our purpose for the next season of Newsom. We, or at least I, fully believe that we have been on the right path from the beginning. We have fulfilled some purpose, but there is more. And it is time to find out what that “more” is. It’s time to stop letting life live us. We are going to live our life.
Where are you at in life? Are you old and “wise” letting your life live you or are you living life? Either way, we hope you subscribe to our blog. One thing we would love to be able to do is inspire you to find your purpose and live!
Thanks for reading! We’d love to know where you are at in your story by leaving us a comment below!