So where does this leave me?

I don't write in my journal much anymore.

It used to be therapy for me. Maybe I'm not getting that therapy.

It used to help me stay focused. Maybe I'm unfocused now.

It was were I talked to God incessantly. I don't talk to God as much as I used to.

It was were I wrote my dreams. I don't dream as much as I used to.

And that's where I stopped. I don't dream as much as I used to. That concerns me.


So today, I dream a bit.

I haven't allowed myself to dream fo a long time due to taking care of mom and dad financially and "looking for love" and I guess I've also been "doing the corporate ting" and the general "DC thing" of quietly reading a book on the bus or typing on a computer for the past 4-5 years... to tired to dream when I came home... knowing I would just need to go back to work and stop dreaming the next day.

But something dies inside when I do that.

Obviously, sometimes we can't always get what we want in every day of our lives... but if we never find ourselves doing what bring us alive (say maybe once per week?) do we not die a little inside every 5-10 days that we don't have that spark of hope? The Bible has a verse in it that says "Without a vision, my people perish." That easily could be translated "Without a hope, my people perish." I really believe that.

I recently learned that at my new job, there are people who are celebrating 50 years where I work. Call me a hippy drifter, but if you've been at one corporation for 50 years in the town of Chevy Chase Maryland... I have to wonder if your curiosity with life, the world, and even hope... died inside somewhere along the way. Even one of our speakers in our orientation asked us to raise our hands if any of us dreamed as a child that we would work at an insurance company when we grew up. Not one hand went up.

Or is it possible that a person in one town for 50 years may not need more hope and satisfaction than just steady work and food to make them happy and hopeful?

I guess it's possible, but I relate more to Jesus in this case... when He says that man does not live by bread alone... and Jesus didn't live in one place for 50 years. Nor did anyone who I remember reading about in history classes who changed the world for good or evil. Perhaps changing the world isn't some people's need.

But it is mine; and I guess I'm coming to grips with the fact that I must live with that burden... and the fact that it means I'm often moving. Often relocating. Often reevaluating. Constantly dissatisfied. Satisfaction is only temporary for me. Deeply temporary. I'm restless, too restless, perhaps; but I'm coming to accept my restlessness as a trait God designed for good in me. I'm embracing it more and more every day, I think.

In short, the question I ask myself is this:

"Can 50 years under the commands of numerous bosses that have almost nothing to do with your callings and dreams in life be a wise decision?"

What if Martin Luther King Jr. had refused to answer his life call?
What if Gandhi had stayed in England to make his fortune?
What if Jesus refused to leave Nazareth?
What if Patch Adams had not opened his own clinic for suffering children?

When you hear a call, do you ignore it because of a need for security?

Am I just too "Footloose" and "Patch Adams" and "Into the Wild" about life? Am I allowing an over-commitment to a corporation to bother me too much?

I think I cannot judge the heart of the long-time employees at the company where I work. I work next to someone who has been at the company for 30 years and she says she "relies on her profit-sharing"... every year... go figure... I'm not too attracted to that idea. All I wan to rely on in life is the air I breathe and the voice of God on my heart and mind.

I guess I want the road less traveled, in the words of Robert Frost:

ROAD LESS TRAVELED

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth

Then took the other as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet, knowing how way leads onto way
I doubted if I should ever come back

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in a wood
And I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference


Robert Frost



Signed,

Restless and ok with that