I had dinner last night with a mate and his family. It was wonderful to once again have deep discussions with a good friend. Never have I debated the meaning of life with such intensity and I am amazed at how often this is happening to me. Visiting this friend is very interesting – once you open the door, you enter a whole new reality. Within a minute, I had met Spikey, the new pet Bearded Dragon. Sounds a bit violent for a pet but then this is not your average family. I also got to probe Spikey’s food – amazing stuff - a heaving mass of worms as well as a container full of crickets. I was even invited to chop of the cricket heads as Spikey is not too keen on the heads. He does however like his crickets dipped in a strawberry flavoured power - nothing quite like a strawberry cricket shake! Amazingly enough I did not find myself tempted to try one. With three boys and a girl in the house, conversation ranged from beheaded crickets to soccer to chess with the finale being a premiere of a song for a concert later this week (twice).
This is a special household – strong family values abound here! It is filled with respect and caring and love. These are just a couple of reasons why I thoroughly enjoy coming back to visit. These reasons and the deep philosophical debates that we have ensure that I leave with plenty to think about. My friend is also a truly special person to me in that he is a beacon in a sea of craziness. He is never afraid to ask the hard questions. For instance – am I making this change for selfish reasons? Am I sure that what I am doing is not purely for my own good but for the good of the family? I suppose what he is asking is am I doing this to get a holiday or is my family going to suffer as a result of this decision while I get to do the things I want to do? Tough questions, thanks buddy.
My visit was also a wake up call that I am extremely lucky to be in a position where I can take a chance with my life and do something different as well as have the financial resources to survive for a little while. Not everyone out there has the means or ability to make drastic changes, to do what they want to do. Most are well and truly stuck in life and there are very few options for desired change that are acceptable. Regardless of our life circumstance, we are all capable of asking hard questions of ourselves. We also owe it to ourselves to be honest with our answers. I am privileged and blessed to have a friendship as special as this one.
2 comments:
Hey Mark...Here's my penny's worth.
You are absolutely correct! I would rather have buddies who are willing to ask the hard questions and challenge my thinking, than a couple of okes smiling and waving as I go off the deep end.
Now, I so get your awakening! To me you certainly are not on your way to a holiday but you irrevocably shaking up a new coctail of your life's priorities. Our motivation for our ambition, initially, is provision and want. Then as life progresses we get seduced by power, esteem, influence and of course good old materialism. Now, I don't think there is anything wrong with chasing any of those carrots, however its our life priorities which gets lost in the fray. Soon we are identified in our own minds as well as thos of others by what we do and what we seek to do; by what we own and what we seek to own. This sort of speaks to Maslow's hierarchy of needs...You have progressed through the various stages to this point where you are heavily self-actualising. The problem with the line of thought (Maslow's) is that our interpretation is often a linear or one of mutual exclusion. So we tend to simplify the model into...once I've reached this..I forget about the previous stage...etc. This is a falacy though. I believe that there needs to be a whole lot of inter-play between stages just in different proportions. Such as with me...I have been self actualsing for some time but I am definetly not in that stage...the protions are just out of wack. So, whats my point? With you...You are heavily into self-actualisation..Great!..but the other needs remain real and so your proportionate of effort and energy is turned upside down. You will need to maintain the supply to deliver for the other needs in order to keep self-actualising! So the mindset is not minimising the importance of keeping up with your hunter-gatherer activities but rather changing those activities in order to allow your high proportionate spend on the self-actualisation of Mark Eames...go morality, go creativity...go family...underpinned by your well-honed hunter-gatherer skills...
Dude, I like the way you write! You are so right - gotta create that income stream in order to ensure that I have a long term view on this new life. I must say that I am looking forward to the challenge!
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