Shackles

Maybe studying accounting makes me philosophical. Maybe that's the magic of accounting.

What would you choose -- a simple life with a lack of aspirations or a life full of aspirations and unnecessary complexities? This is the choice I have to make to find my own path to self-actualization.

I was just exposed to the simplest idea last night. Brian told me that he's on track to what he wants out of life. He said he never really had much (career) aspirations; he just wants to be happy, fulfilled, healthy, safe ....

Happiness doesn't have to include complexities. It can come from the intangibles in life that are not measurable by things, resumes, certificates or dollar amounts.

It's not about how far you end up; it's about how you feel while you get there.

At that moment, I just realized that, just maybe, I have been thinking too much all along.

I also realized that I never once questioned the existence of my aspirations. To aspire for a grand career and the achievement of "great things" was never quite an option; it's an expectation. But lately, I've been questioning whose aspirations these are? Mine? My parents? Colleagues? Whose? How does it feel to have these aspirations? Do they bring me happiness or just the gratification of duty-fulfilled? Do they give me more insight into life and my heart or does it mask my feelings with a false sense of fulfillment? Is that why I feel trapped in between decisions, not knowing whether to follow the mind or the heart? And why am I here at school in this program? Did I do it to just find something to do, somewhere to go and to appease/pacify my parents? Is that why my heart isn't in school right now -- because these are not things I want to learn at the moment, but wanting to learn about the depths of my life instead?

Perhaps aspirations really are the shackles of the mind which is waiting to be freed by inspiration.

I am determined to seek the truth.

[I am grateful to have someone like Brian who can give me a window through which to see a radically different idea on life than my own.]