You can never make enough money in this world.
You can never read all the words of this world.
I used to think that most things in our life can be decided, is of a conscious decision that can be broken down into pros and cons, weighted, evaluated, and a rational choice can be made with the best outcome chosen. Perhaps some folks are able to make big decisions like this, churning through important factors and ultimately deciding. Somewhere along the way of this journey to China, I find myself no longer able to do what some part of me believed to be the right thing – to find a job and begin the building of a family, the most basic building blocs – financial security, assets and one day a house. The longer I forced myself to research companies and sending out cover letters my anxiety grew, like a knot tightly pulled around my chest, it was only loosened when I secretly read old books that held little material value.
Strange how the more I read these ancient Chinese scripture, the more my mind opened up to life’s possibilities. I found an inner joy unbound by the trappings of tangible things. There are things today, as in every age, that confines our imagination, that defines boundaries of what we can and cannot do. Reading these words showed me another reality that existed, that can be. And maybe I felt a little of what many people call a purpose in life.
There is a voice that bites me when I dream too much, that yearns to be practical, that tells me to not be foolish. For the longest time that voice held my mother’s image. Surely someday I will stop using my parents as an excuse not to do something. Though it some times makes things easier.
Does it matter that my laboring parents actually may need material support without the safety nets of superannuation? And the reality of success for me is a road where I myself will not attain financial, geographical stability until much later?
These are the questions that do not keep me up at night, but slowly spreads wings during the mornings, sporadically distracting during moments of doubt.
I am still figuring the reality of these voices. For now I can no longer entertain both roads – of work and of study. To continue means mediocrity at both – that is the most unacceptable road of all.
For now I tell myself focus on the nearer term, one step at a time. And though scary, it feels right – that my decisions encompass my family’s well being, even if right now there appears an unbridgeable canyon.