Mid Life Changes

"But just then, for that fraction of time, it seems as though all things are possible. You can look across the limitations of your own life, and see that they are really nothing. In that moment when time stops, it is as though you know you could undertake any venture, complete it and come  back to yourself, to find the world unchanged, and everything just as you left it a moment before. And it's as though knowing that everything is possible, suddenly nothing is necessary..." ~ Diana Gabaldon

And the quote above is precisely how I have felt this past year.

How the world has not changed and how much I have.

From my twenties and having just turned 33 and have taken a love for travelling, I have internally differed in how I look at the world, how I decide what's valuable.

I mean, I used to be crazy about designer leather bags and would buy them in droves. And then I saw a video clip about how the animals were treated in obtaining the skin and I just couldn't bear looking at these bags anymore. I would just opt for the nylon or fabric ones now. And I see the packaged ones I  keep in my closet, rows upon rows of them...just staring at me.

I used to wait for the newest phones to come out and book them and line up to buy them, no matter the price. And last weekend when my iphone went kaput I winced in pain when I realised I would have to spend 2k to replace it, because I do not want to  be bound by a contract. I just find spending that much money on a phone so wasteful and I do not want to do it anymore. So when this one breaks down, no more of these types of phones.

I look at the clothes I have in my closet, and I just feel like apart from my favourites, I need to sell the rest and put money in Aracare, or I need to find people to give these away to. 

I would rather spend on books and my travels, and on Airiel's education, and on helping others.

I see people treat me or my family like crap or bitch about us constantly or take advantage of us and apart from not needing to respond, because I do not respond to people beneath me, I sometimes actually feel sorry for them for being so miserable. I would just cut them off because I do not have the energy to let them be in my life. It's just too tiring.

Being angry is tiring, being vengeful is tiring, being bitter is tiring. And I am tired of being tired. 

I just feel like I have so many things, and these things are suffocating me and caving in on me, and becoming a liability, a burden. Its just so heavy.

I can't explain it. I just feel like there is so much suffering in the world and yet people around us, society, have become so selfish, with little or no empathy and obsessed with THINGS and how people see them. And I am so ashamed to admit that at one point in my life, I was like them too.

It's crazy how I wake up one day and realise how messed up the world is and I need to do something about it, no matter how little of a difference I can make. 

One life at a time. One step at a time.

I need to start. I need to help. I need to grow. I need to not simply exist.

Lets do this.