Contemplation

Sometimes you just need to shut off the TV, computer, cell phone, and close the book you are reading. Sometimes you just need to close your bedroom door. Sometimes, you just need to silence the thoughts inside your head, silence the noise around you, and for just a few moments...lie down, stare at the ceiling, and just contemplate.



I've recently become more than too aware of life's uncertainties. As I look at my peers, the few friends I had in college, I see where they are going. I see where they are now, many of them nurses, working people. I see a lot of kids I went to school with, who had incredible aspirations, and then fell to the wayside...going down a path that they didn't intend on traveling. Then, I had to take a look at myself. Where am I in my life, really? Right now, my job is teaching martial arts...probably the easiest and most gratifying job I've had in my life. However, it has no medical or insurance benefits. It has no retirement plan...if anything, I feel as if it is, in itself, a retirement plan. It's just simply something I want to do and something I love doing. I'm happier than most of my peers when it comes to my job. However, should I continue this path, or seek something else to fulfill my financial needs?



I'm not good at a whole lot of things. I'm good at teaching martial arts, practicing martial arts, talking, and eating. I don't have a degree in a fancy major, nor do I have a degree that really was supposed to get me anywhere in a concrete sense. I just knew that there was no major for what I was truly passionate about, and that I only wanted to do one thing, which was to involve martial arts in my professional life in some sense. Now, at 23, an adult in the strictest sense of the word...I want to know whether I'm supposed to be a martial arts instructor....or if I'm meant to do something more with it. I don't think my passion for FMA will ever disappear or go away, so what I want to know is if I am truly meant to be just a martial arts instructor...or if I'm supposed to do something more with it.


I just wish I knew what that "something" was.

In the midst of contemplation, I also realized how important it is to simply ENJOY life. I find that too often, I try to improve my life so much and try to find answers to so many questions to the point that I forget what a gift it really is. Yes, I believe it is important to find ways to improve one's life, but at the same time I feel that life isn't always something that needs improving. Sometimes, it's just something that's meant to be enjoyed.