What is it you’re doing with your life?

So many of us leave home early from our very nice houses. We drive to work in our very nice cars. Alone in our automotive cocoons, we pass ten thousand other civilian soldiers we’re unlikely ever to know.

At work, beneath the flickering glare of fluorescent lights, we act as though our job description contains some transcendent truth. Juggling a landline and a mobile like two six-shooter pistols, our eyes might glaze over as a computer demands and directs our attention.

A soft-bodied cog in a gigantic machine, made brittle and metallic with tension. Then when worn down we’re retired and replaced. The machine of production and economy, to which we contribute our lifeblood, will continue making widgets when we’ve gone.

Five days per week, for forty years or more we spend our precious existence. Awakening early to the screaming alarm. Asleep with eyes still open at the end of each exhausting day. Weekends spent playing games with balls against the opposition, with the numbing cheer of beer to enjoy as a reward.

You may believe there is but one life till dust and dirt enfolds you. You may believe there comes new life in heaven or in hell. You may believe in a kaleidoscope of karma where life’s doors are constantly revolving.

No matter which option your belief holds, the challenge of finding and living with meaning and purpose is present in every now. There are no rules about how a life of meaning and purpose might look. Each person’s truth is as different as one snowflake from another.

I suggest you step back from the lifestyle you are so immersed in and consider it’s real worth. Do you do what you do out of habit? Are you following a line of smelly sheep in front of you?

Have the courage to dream of your world without boundaries! Step out of the paddock, past the barbed wire fence. Walk far into the distance, deep into the wilderness, past the point where you could turn back.

Breathe in life deeply, and see what becomes.

Martin Hunter Jones is an honorary life member of the Australian Counselling Association. He has a practice on the Northern Beaches. Phone 9973 4997.