the world of gayeIS THAT ALL THERE IS?
September 5th 2009 00:46
While sitting around and chatting with a couple of old friends the other night the conversation turned to our lives and we wondered that age old question about ourselves and our lives "how did I get here". I have talked to a lot of people my age in the last couple of years and often suspected that a lot of them were not where they wanted to be, not where they thought they would end up, and just existing but not experiencing.
I wonder how many people reach a certain age and start to think to themselves "is this all there is".
I look at some of my lovely friends and I just know instinctively that they are not happy, that they have sat back and just said "well, this is my lot in life". This includes myself as well, and I am doing a lot of thinking about how to change myself and my life before the opportunities pass me by. I think I would describe it as a quiet desperation, a knowing that you have to change things, but just don't know where to start. I also wonder if this realisation (with me anyway) is why sometimes we are so desperate for our children to succeed, so that twenty or thirty years down the track they don't sit in quiet desperation and think "how did I end up here".
It is not that I think anybody sits and cries, or sinks into depression over their choices, I don't. But I sense there is so much in my friends and I yet to be fulfilled. We are happy enough, we laugh and there is joy in our lives, but I am sure there is something missing.
Do you know what I mean?
Maybe that's sometimes the reason why middle aged men go off the rails and decide to have affairs or leave their families. Maybe panic sets in when they realise they may only have another twenty years left and they don't want to "just accept their lot"
I think maybe it is like a fork in the road we have reached and we have to decide whether we have the energy or the guts to put aside what we know, and take the road to something different. I don't mean leave our families or change everything about ourselves. I mean being brave enough to aknowledge that this is not the life I want, it is not the way I want to end up. It seems so scary to leave the safety zone of our predictable lives and try to find our way to where we want to be. But I would love not to see the quiet desperation in my lovely friends faces.
I wonder how many people reach a certain age and start to think to themselves "is this all there is".
It is not that I think anybody sits and cries, or sinks into depression over their choices, I don't. But I sense there is so much in my friends and I yet to be fulfilled. We are happy enough, we laugh and there is joy in our lives, but I am sure there is something missing.
Do you know what I mean?
I think maybe it is like a fork in the road we have reached and we have to decide whether we have the energy or the guts to put aside what we know, and take the road to something different. I don't mean leave our families or change everything about ourselves. I mean being brave enough to aknowledge that this is not the life I want, it is not the way I want to end up. It seems so scary to leave the safety zone of our predictable lives and try to find our way to where we want to be. But I would love not to see the quiet desperation in my lovely friends faces.
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