Recently, a coworker of mine lent me the book Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. For those of you who don’t know, it was on the U.S. Bestseller list and it’s a highly acclaimed book, and rightfully so. Without giving too much away, the contents of the story are pretty simple: it’s about a teacher reconnecting with his student and their very last class together: a class all about life, and how to be a good human. And as you may guess, it only took place on Tuesdays.
Throughout our lives, we spend so much time doing mindless things. We spend hours watching the latest and most popular reality TV show, we go to the bar and have drinks with our friends and complain about our lives, and we lay around scrolling through social media as if it’s our job. And then, after a day or week full of all these silly activities, we wonder why we aren’t happy. We wonder why, that life our parents told us we could have, isn’t in our sights. We wonder why we’re depressed and hopeless, but we fail to realize we can change this.
One of the important lessons from within the pages of Mitch Albom’s book is about creating your own culture. We all know the culture that we grew up with, the one that we unconsciously learned how to mold with. Believe it or not, we all are guilty of this. We adhere to the TV shows everyone else watches even when we hate it, we go to work like everyone else even if we know there’s another position we’d love a whole hell of a lot more, and we buy things to impress people we don’t even like. Most of the time, we succumb to the culture around us, without thinking we can create our own culture.
Could you imagine what your life would be like if you woke up when you wanted to? Drank coffee, ate breakfast and read the newspaper in the morning instead of rushing to the office? Sat in your home office and tended to work that you loved, and that would help you to make a living?
People always say that it’s insane, that it can’t be done, but there’s proof it can be done: entrepreneurs, the dreamers. They are the ones who see a vision for the future and produce action towards said vision. In today’s capitalistic society, entrepreneurs are the kind of people to see the opportunity and go after it because they aren’t afraid to live life within their own boundaries, on their own terms.
Deep within each and every one of us, we’re still that little kid we used to be, running around on the playground and chasing after our friends. We still have those naive dreams of writing novels, being in movies, traveling the world, or even something as simple as being a scientist in a lab performing experiments all day. The point is, we all are capable of dreaming. But are we capable of living? Chasing after what we want most and being truly honest with ourselves about what we value most in this life?
The answer is yes. We are capable of living. We only need to trust ourselves enough to move past our worries, our comfort zones, and into unknown forests. You may fail, but hell, you may fly. And you never know if you don’t try to create your own culture. Create your own reality, or someone else will help bend you to fit theirs.
