Is it reality or the false notion of reality? or probably escaping from that world of reality and going into my own reality, it might be my fantasy.
After spending few months here and after the traveling I’ve done over the past 3 years, I started to question things more often and find the way of today’s life very different than before. I know we all evolve as time goes by, but at the same time I became more convinced than ever that the way we live in today’s “modern” society cannot be sustained for so many different reasons.
We’ve been bombarded by media and by older generations who’ve also been fed a lot of propaganda that made life harder for them, for us and probably for many generations to come. There are many labels that we were taught, we were taught ambition, goal setting, is the way to achieve success and money. I started to realize that a lot of these labels are the source of our unhappiness and our destructive lives. We were taught everyone has to have a goal and in order to succeed in life you have to achieve these goals, we started to chase the numbers, and everyone has to be number one no matter what. Success doesn’t count if you don’t amass a lot of money and lots of material things. We started to justify the wrong means to reach the false goals.
People work so hard, they buy things to make their lives easier thinking it will also make them happier, which for a while is true, but then our goals keep shifting so for example getting a small car or a small apartment when starting your life, later in life you will start want a newer car or bigger apartment. And you keep working all your life towards these things hopping one day you will retire and start enjoying life. Before too long you will realize that you missed the opportunity and time to relax and it’s hard to retire. Most people in the western world will die without ever being able to pay-off the mortgage on the house they lived in all their lives. Because most people they buy a house and take a mortgage to of 30 years but as the goal shift that same place they got becomes old so either take another mortgage to renovate or buy another bigger or more modern place. And in order to achieve these things someone would have to get stuck in a job he doesn’t like or can justify that it’s what he likes in order to chase the false notion of the need to own a house.
Every time I visit a big city and now that I live in a big city, I cannot understand the faces of the people, especially those who’re chasing to be successful. Why they look so worried, never content and complaining of every little thing. I see people always carrying shopping bags. It seems no matter what they have they still feel empty. Clothes were primary created to provide protection from the natural surroundings for comfort. Cars were created to be a mode of transportation, but nowadays everything is a status symbol. And this is not only in Canada, it’s everywhere, I read in South Korea people will try to go eat a cheap noodle meal but will go to a Starbucks which costs more than what a traditional meal would cost in order to show that they have a Starbucks cup because it becomes like a status symbol. No wonder with all these type of pressure that people are unhappy. When you’re being taught what to wear, what to eat, what to say and how to live, then what difference does it make living in society’s prison or a justice prison.
I know how much pressure society has, I find traveling a way to escape this pressure if at least temporary but also a therapy to escape and unplug from reality. Sometimes I think about the decisions I have taken of leaving my job but I realize I have no regrets for leaving a comfortable good paying office job. Every time I travel I realize how fortunate and happy to have made that decision and the ability to be a free thinker, at least it makes feel as if I am not living in society’s prison.
You were #1 at Burger King 😉