the reality of my non-existence

I left home more than 4 years ago and have been living a semi nomadic life. The thing about it is that I feel really comfortable with this insecured and wandering life... travel to many exotic places, meet wonderful people and live in amazing place... As uncertain as life is, I really enjoy every moment and appreciate everything that comes into my life, maybe because of it. And the most important feeling of all these, is that all these feel so natural! It feels weird to even say that it feels natural to be a normad.

However, if we look to the beginning of our human exitence (what we know), the early human beings are nomadic, then we became more land cultivators, so now our society is founded in this format and we are brought up to think that this is the only way of life there is.

I always thought that there is no other way but the way of our father and our father's father... but the problem is that I was never convinced and was always unhappy with what I was doing. I studied, got a good degree, found a good and promising job, but nothing could wipe away the emptiness that was gnawning at my inside. Making the decision to break away from the "reality" that I have known all my life was both difficult and easy; easy because I was ready to leave, difficult because I do not know the path that lays infront of me: the fear of the unknown.

I didn't like who I was because I felt that I was beginning to lose myself in the world, letting the society tells me who I was, trying to mould myself into the different boxes that society conditions us to comply. So I set out to search for myself, the essence of my being, not merely my identity.

But after taking the first step, the rest comes very easily. It was very hard at the beginning to try to establish myself. And just when I got things going for me, I had to leave. And the years of moving around have given me a lot of opportunity to meet interesting, simple and enlightened people but it also did not allow me to establish a permanent relation and that is one of the hardest. I have to be conscious of myself otherwise it is so easy to be drawn back into the vicious circle that society throws you into; money-work-expectation-pressure-etc; where everyone around you is worrying about their future, regretting about their past and missing out in the present. And now, I won't even cause a "beep" in the tangled radar of social tentacles; pension fund, social security, tax income, health care, etc. You can even say that I don't exist, a phantom, a shadow, a passerby in people's life.

But nothing feel more real to me than now.

Birthday wishes

What does birthday mean? People say that it's a day where you celebrate the day of your birth. But why this day? Why not celebrate everyday... because life is a continuous event, if you take away any single day between your previous and current birthdays, you would not have reached the current birthday. In my opinion, everyday is a special day... yes, we do like to commemorate days and events, that's socially constructed behaviour.

That said, being the first born child in my family, my birthdays were celebrate with pomp and glee. It was really normal for me to have a family dinner, a cake and candles on this day. But on my 21st birthday, I realised that nothing I could do could surpass all the birthdays I had ever had until then, so with a stroke of ingenuity, I decided not to celebrate my birthday at all. And who would have known that that decision 14 years ago is still in effect today.

Friends often ask me why I don't want to celebrate this day and the most common question the day after is "how did you celebrate it?" The question I want to ask is, why is it such a big deal? I know it is a special day, the day of our birth... isn't it equally important the day of our conception? And if we are surrounded by family and friends, then there is a good reason to gather and have fun. But if you are alone?

I have been living a rather normadic life for the last 4 and half years. I like this lifestyle but the only setback is that it leaves me pretty alone and lonely some of the times. I have friends around the world but not many close to me in terms of geographical distance. And because everything in my life now is so temporary, I find it hard to RELATE to people. It is easy for me to make quick friendship, especially when I am travelling. Everything is so temporary; we are only together for a few days so it is easy to just see the beauty and goodness of the other person. But when I stay in one place, I get to know a person better, the novelty starts to wear off and I start to REALLY get to know the person... the goodness, the defects, etc just like any other person. That's the difficult part for me. I became impatient with myself and with the other person.

There's always one thing that I think about and wish for on my birthday, and that's love. I have been really unlucky in love so far in my life. 35 years without a real taste of a lasting love, that's quite tough to bear. But the more I reflect on myself, the more I realise that I am not ready for love. Even if it comes, I might not recognise it because I am only on the look out for perfection, without realising that love has a defective side too.

And to understand and experience love fully, I have to embrace the perfection as well as the defect... this is my birthday wish...