Living or Existing

“Being in the maze and existing versus being outside of the maze and living is a choice you can make. It's up to you.”

I thought about these words Sunday night and I was made to ponder my current career choice. Am I doing what I was meant to do with my career? Am I making the best use of my skills, interests, and talents? Do I merely exist, or am I living to the fullness of my abilities?

Each of us on an individual basis, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, will have to address the questions I have posed above. The maze or “personal matrix”, as we defined it previously – a physical box with no way out and your destiny is not one you define, is the place where the questions of life are lived. However, it is not until you get outside the maze and become objective about who, where, and why you are, will “life outside the maze” become a reality. What is the point? The maze does not define you. Who you are is independent of the maze.

How do you get outside the maze?

Did you find yourself experiencing a bout of anxiety that comes with the imminent approach of Monday morning and the fade of Sunday evening as the weekend drew to a close?

Did you pay special attention to the clock as the weekend faded to black and you reminisced about all the fun you experienced during the weekend? (Or, if it was not a “fun” weekend, it was time away from the job.)

Why do you suppose you felt that way, if you did?

Being in the maze can create anxiety. Confinement or constriction of any type only serves to magnify our limitations, fears, or inhibitions. If you are not free in your mind, how can you be free?

Living outside the maze is an exercise in freeing your mind from the limitations, conventions and traditions the maze seeks to impose upon you. Living outside the maze is a continual effort to see beyond the walls – to embrace the possibility that exists, but is not apparent in the maze. Living outside the maze is simply about the right mental approach to living that is part of the daily cycle of life. Living outside the maze becomes the reality – not the perception.

In the days to follow, I’d like to take you a on a personal adventure where life outside the maze as seen through the eyes of a humble soul might help you “see” beyond the walls of your personal matrices.

Sunday nights will never be the same.