relax into the mystery

"Absorb what is useful, Discard what is not, Add what is uniquely your own.”
~Bruce Lee

i like this quote. anything that promotes individuality, is something that i am drawn to. i feel ashamed most of the time. ashamed that i have become a conformist. and in a lot of ways i still dream of a completely different life. a life that i am no where near living. and it gets to me. i start to think about things and wonder, how important is this job/apartment/town/item i own to me? can i let it go and start over? can i do things without a safety net for once? go out on a limb and take a risk? its something that i fantasize about but don't have much courage to do. recently something happened to me at work that made me consider the possibility of losing my job. and somehow it didn't terrify me. i thought i would have new opportunities and no more excuses for not doing what i really want to try.

and i start to think well, things aren't so bad, but they aren't amazingly great either, and how long can i realistically sit with all this complacency? won't it drive me crazy in the end? cause a nervous breakdown? doesn't everyone deserve an amazingly great life and shouldn't they devote some time to figure out how to get one?

i try to think that i'm doing the best i can. that's all well and good but when you come down to it, i'm not seizing the day or the moment. i'm not doing the things that i long for. and i'm living in a way that does not relate to the real me. it's really hard to fit in with society. to live a 9 to 5 life, to work for the weekends, and dread all your mondays. and it shouldn't have to be that way. life wasn't meant to be lived that way. we are human beings, not machines. we should not live to work. we should not watch our lives go by in a blur as we strive for the bigger and better salary/house/reward.

we only get so many days on this earth. its a shame how we waste them all the time, with television, with too much sleeping, with isolation, with weariness and exhaustion. i'm all too aware of this. but it's hard to know how to change. i've always dreamed of being someone different. someone more social and less of a homebody. somehow i think my life would be so different and have more excitement. but how can i do that when it's not in my nature? how can i fight and overcome that shyness and fear? it's so hard to do what you know you should do. i know i should exercise more, write more, meditate, see my family more, make more friends,but i don't. even though i know these things will make me happy. why?