Living here in SF makes me aware of the people less fortunate than myself who live in poverty. Everywhere I look I see homeless people; begging for food, drug money, or just a place to keep them warm. Personally, I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the concept of being homeless. What brought these people to where they are now? Was it certain life experiences, problems, personality or mentality? I almost feel like it would be close to impossible for me to ever be homeless. I would never let myself get that point in my life where my home was the streets and my only source of income relied on the people who took pity towards me. I strongly believe that my flight or fight instincts would kick in and I would do whatever it took to maintain whatever type of crappy, depressing and low paying job it was in order to keep a roof over my head and food on the table. I would mentally push myself to extreme limits in order to survive and move forward in life.
I guess that is the difference between the people who “escape life” and end up on the streets in unhealthy conditions, and those who take responsibility for their lives and manage to work through the unfavorable circumstances that life brings them. One of the reasons why people stay in jobs that they don’t like is because they have to make a living. If they don’t have a job that brings in money than they will have to deal with the consequences such as: no food, shelter, clothing, education etc. Part of life is learning how to make it work and evolve into something that fulfills your dreams, goals and desires. If we all quit our jobs every time we got upset at someone or disagreed with someone we would ALL be unemployed and homeless. In addition, I think that people who escape life show a lack of discipline, strength, perseverance and drive. Life is not intended to be something that just passes us by; it is something that takes a lot of work and effort to make work right. Life, is a task all in itself. The ones who decide to take the easy way out and hide from the reality of it are the ones who miss out on living, growing and reaching dreams. On the other hand, those who confront their problems with work, school, relationships etc, instead of giving up, come to find that often times life’s cruel and unusual punishments are actually blessings in disguise.
By staying alert and engaged in the different spheres of our lives we can fight the feelings that make us want to give up and quit. We will face negative situations in life that deter us from moving forward so that we can accomplish important things. More so, we will resume responsibility in order to better ourselves, reach that step that brings us closer to our goals; whether it be graduating college, getting a raise, paying off debt; we all have to keep pushing ourselves. Watts had an excellent way of viewing life. He said that life is a journey. It isn’t supposed to be easy. If it was, we would never learn from our mistakes, consequences or develop as a person. Your whole life you are told you need to accomplish something and get somewhere so that you can make advancements in life. When you finally achieve those things you have to start over. We don’t stop and settle with what we have or are given, we continue to created new goals and dreams so that we have a purpose to live life.
We should not take advantage of our lives in the sense that we take things for granite such as a job that we half ass because we hate the people, but we should take advantage of our ability to become anything we want. We have so many opportunities to make something of ourselves and so many resources to help us get there. Escaping life is a choice, a decision to not do anything at all. Living life is a privilege because it allows us to explore and express ourselves on a daily basis.
I’ve been blessed by God or a higher power because my life has been anything but ordinary since I was born. I was born in India Calcutta and adopted by a family in California. I’ve been living here for the last twenty two years of my life. I have the most amazing, loving, and supportive family in the world. Words can’t explain how fortunate and lucky I am to be living here, going to school here and building a life for myself. When I think about my life and the conditions I could be living in, I instantly thank God for giving me this new life. There are times when I complain about school, friends, family, money etc. I realize that I have nothing to complain about. No matter what my problems may be in the moment or what I’m going through that day, it does not compare to what I could be complaining about if I still lived in India. Being adopted really gave me this new look on life. As corny as it may sound I live life to the fullest with no regrets and I don’t look back. I work through all my problems one day at a time and make sure that I remember that there are much worse things in life that could have happened to me.
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