Another day, another year, another season
of life has passed, and with the close of 2013 we step blissfully into a new
year of possibility where the shackles of burdens past are cast aside and a
world of opportunity lays before us. Such is the promise a new year. It always
is. Every year the world stops to watch a ball in Times Square count down the
last remaining seconds of a dying life so that a new one may be reborn from the
ashes. Only it is not from ashes, but rather rainbow colored confetti and the
familiar tune of Auld Lang Syne that heralds our arrival into this brave new world.
We have done it. We have reset the clock for an entire year, but what chapters
now follow remain unwritten, just waiting for us to pick up our pen and fill
the page.
The first sentence of my page for 2014
has just been written, not more than an hour ago when I was told, "Bobby,
thank you for your efforts but we are going to have to let you go." There
it is...again. Another layoff, another company I have cast my lot with is going
bankrupt, and like a rat fleeing a sinking ship I find myself once again in the
cold waters of frustration and uncertainty. Three times...three times I have
been laid off since graduating. And with each unfulfilled opportunity, with
each failed attempt in the corporate world, I have finally resolved myself to
my fate. I'm done. I'm done with this life of pursuing wealth at the expense of
my humanity. I'm done with letting the world before my eyes murder the ones of
my imagination. Though my resume reads like that of a businessman, my heart is
that of a dreamer, a poet, a man whose only real happiness is known within the
beauty of a flowing quill. I cannot fall back into a life pursuing wealth, for
it is an illness for which there is no cure.
So where will 2014 now take me? I have
no ties to Atlanta or anywhere else that might encumber my wanderings. I have
no responsibilities to a wife nor children that might command my loyalty. No, I
have a duty only to myself, a duty to finish my novel and pursue the literary
dreams that have for so long been stifled by a countenance repressed by
irrational fears. My fears were that without financial security in my life
there would be no happiness, indeed there could not be. But I am not afraid of
that anymore. Instead a new fear consumes me, a fear far more malignant and
ominous that anything hitherto seen. I am afraid of my dreams dying. I am afraid
of losing the only thing that truly makes me human. And you
should be too. If there is one thing that I have realized from all of my
layoffs, all of my failed attempts at fighting and scraping for just a tiny bit
of security, it is that there truly is none. There is no security, not with
finances, not with people, and not with trying to pursue a life that many of us
never imagined but have woken up to find ourselves in all the same. But there
are costs, and those costs are the dreams you have for whatever life you want
to live. That is the part of you that makes you special, the part of you that
is makes life worth living, and no one can ever take that from you...but sadly,
it can be given away.
Don't give away your dreams, and don't
give up on them either. As we begin a new year full of endless possibilities,
ask yourself if the life you have found yourself in is the one you want or
merely the one you have accepted. Is it a life centered on holding onto security
or living your dreams? With each drop of the ball in Times Square, with each
rendition of Auld Lang Syne, we are that much closer to writing our final
chapter and closing our book forever. Our stories are coming to an end, and
with them all of our unfulfilled dreams. So hold fast to your pen and start writing
today, then look back in wonder at the story you have told.
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