Awaken from the Dream

I was following the classic life template: go to school, get a job, start a career, start a family, save for retirement, and die. I never said it aloud before because I was afraid to hear it, but I always thought that template was kinda boring and probably not for me. I finally had a career in my field of study, I was living on my own, I had a great circle of friends, and from an outsider's perspective, you might say I was doing pretty good.

A couple of months into my job which would become my career, I became aware of a void in my heart that seemed to suck up all the happiness. I was not feeling fulfilled at work which made me hate it... a shitty position to be in since it consumed much of my waking life, but I was almost 30 and feeling pretty entrenched in my current situation. At this point I felt that I should just stick it out and try to be content with how my life was going.

What was I supposed to do... Quit?! Yeah right! I spent 7 of the best years of my life and a ridiculous amount of hard-earned money, studying to get the credentials for this job. I was stuck. And as Newton said: "An object at rest, will stay at rest until such a time that it is acted upon by an outside force". And then the force happened.

In February 2013, I had an epiphany that changed my life. I had an experience that made me feel viscerally, right down to my core, the preciousness of life.

Ironically, it was an experience of Death that made me appreciate Life. In that experience of death, I glimpsed our omnipotence, our immortality, and our fragility. I learned as I have always been taught (though I had doubted), that we are more than we appear to be.

Our bodies are a part of us, but by no means do they encompass all that we are. We are the spark of life at the center of our being. We are immortal, and yet this life we have is so short - a blink in the cosmic reality. This realization made me stop and think - what am I doing with my life?

Then I woke up.