The video version of this post is below. 10 – 15 minute read.

You Decide

Supposedly, Socrates once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living”. It is one thing to hear or speak those words, but another thing entirely to live those words. I may as well have said I thought these words myself instead of quoting Socrates. To actually live one’s life in such a way is to express an authentic timelessness where the people who live those lives names are interchangeable, but their words are eternal.

The unexamined life is not worth living

Socrates

Attachment Had Me Too Stressed Out

If anyone has read my story as of late, they would know I left my job at Centerpoint Energy a little over 6 months ago because I was feeling like or getting thoughts; however faint, about taking my own life because I had an attachment to ‘my job’ and the stress that that job had become. There was a feeling of hopelessness for me to continue on, if ‘living’ meant continuing on in this manner. What manner was that you ask? Expressing life as to be devoid of feeling. I thought I had to just grind through it and kind of run away from or avoid how I was feeling. Instead, what wound up happening was it ground through me. It didn’t feel good anymore to go to work and the environment just felt toxic. At that moment in time, I did not feel it was OK to just immediately let go of things that no longer served me. Especially, when I depended on it to facilitate a certain lifestyle for me to which I’ve grown accustomed. I currently had no comfortable answer for myself as to how I could drop that immediately and keep my lifestyle going without a job.

I Understood and Respected This Was How I Truly Felt

Some people, merely hearing that I had thoughts of my demise coming at my own hands being better than this sort of attachment might scare you from me or dirty the clean image you have of bureaucratic life and all its supposed benefits for you. To have that image associated with people like me feeling less than good about themselves and their work to the point of suicide isn’t then so attractive a proposition. So, I did, in a sense, get lost along the way. Yet, lo and behold, ‘I’ came to understand ‘my’ feelings and these feelings are simply a very very strong indication of danger and/or a warning for me ‘individually’ that I had become too attached to this idea of ‘work’. Thus, ‘Os’, ought to clear the area or get unstuck from whatever pattern was leading ‘me’ there irregardless of how other people felt or what other people felt comfortable doing.

Repeating Behavior Patterns

The pattern, I felt, that seemed to take shape was that I can feel this way when someone or something else external to me was dictating my life. ‘I’ wasn’t a part of making important decisions or in control of processes which would impact my life and how I wanted my life to go, then repeating this constantly day in and day out. An example of this happened outside of the corporate setting as well; however, as you’ll read further below, I responded admirably to the situation. Since my departure from Centerpoint Energy, I’ve been trading options for some of my monthly income, but here too, I allowed myself to get too emotionally attached to the unexpected fluctuations of the stock market that went against my positions. Stock indices price movements against my positions made me feel down and put me again on that path of not being in a position to decide the outcomes I want for my life. So, I told my trading mentor that I wasn’t going to track my trades for that day no matter the consequences. Some of my positions were quite a bit ITM (In The Money – which, in this case, means I was in a losing position because I was an options seller) too. The amount of potential loss was significant enough to impact the stability of my mind to the point those woeful feelings returned. Still attachment, but this time to something I thought I had a better sense of control of. I was oh so wrong to think that I could count on this either to provide me with any real sense of security.

Nothing In Life Is Permanent

Ultimately, I wanted to have this sense of permanence that I got this area of my life covered only to see it blown up and issue in more uncertainty than I thought I could handle at the moment. So, I responded like I did when I was on vacation in Las Vegas in this position, which was, to go about doing the activities ‘I’ wanted to do before I even thought to open a trade screen. That meant I woke up when I felt I’d rested enough, brushed and flossed my teeth, brushed my hair, then put on my athletic attire and went for a long solitary walk while listening to Khruangbin with the serene mountains as my back drop under cool clear skies. I didn’t think about money I was losing, I reflected mostly on how I had arrived to this point in my life. This action felt good –I felt empowered, and surprisingly, less stressed than I thought I should be given the circumstances. That carried over as well to the perspective I had to give to this type of activity.

Underlying Insecurities

Now, back in Houston though, I decided to stay away from the trade screen the whole entire day. I went on a long solitary walk around my neighborhood, and again, extremely empowering and relaxing given the circumstances of trade losses piling while I took no action to avert having perhaps less loss. I started off thinking, I’d just do this one day, but then I followed on for another day. It was like telling myself, and knowing, that that is out of my control; therefore, this could never provide me the inward psychological security I was yearning. When I decided to exit from Centerpoint Energy or to step away from my losing options trades, in both cases, there was something I could lose or would lose that put my psychological security at risk. In both cases, I think, insecurities concerning or over a presumed lack of ‘money’ was the most predominate factor in the underlying attachment. I guess I got the idea, or believed, having ‘money’ meant ‘I’ had security and if I didn’t have any, I could not have security. Yet, ‘I’ know I need and require security to function rationally in a society! So, when confronted with the decision, should I take ‘my’ own life for this semblance of security, which is fleeting at best? I keep saying ‘nah’ and choosing to just have my plain ol’ life and being thankful for breathing. These new actions, or responses, day after day start to add up and compound so as to not just be lip service. Those words are backed up with real life experience when shit was really at stake. Now, I’m starting to trust that being myself and ‘living’ my best life gives me all the security I need. Since I’ve already provided a lot of written content for my blog, also as a part of ‘my’ life, I’ll now be sharing my experience on a variety of multimedia platforms and social media.

I’m Deciding My ‘Work’

Going forward, I’m going to decide what, when, why, who, and how I’m going to ‘work’ in a day. I saw that a ‘me’ not deciding what I want my legacy to be will lead to a life nor death that ‘I’ want for myself. Which brings me back to my friend Socrates, I’ve been examining a lot these last few months about just how little I actually dictated how ‘I’ want ‘my’ life to run, especially, in the area referred to as ‘work’. The type of ‘work’ and ‘how’ I was to ‘work’ for shareholders, executive leadership and their chain of command at Centerpoint Energy didn’t jive with me anymore. Nor did the ‘work’ options trading demanded of me. Nor does running a full fledged for profit commercial business(es). I learned ‘I’ can’t be nor should ‘I’ want to be attached to anyone or anything for security. They offer no real solace anyhow. In regards to my life as a whole, I realized, I am 100% personally responsible for myself and any real freedom and happiness I want to have for myself.

Moving Forward

Once I fundamentally understood this for myself, I was freed up to break from these bad relationships where subjugation and authority is the model propagated for control, yet mistakenly deemed to be what freedom is or how freedom operates. I did briefly start to question how I arrived at such a helpless state in the first place. So, I started to look back at my education and upbringing, my family and friends, authority and authority figures, at history, both immediate and past, and it all came back to why waste your valuable time and energy searching for answers to this, unless you want to be angry and bitter, when you have your whole life ahead of you, just move on, be free, and own your day! So, that is what’s changed for me, not dwelling on the past. Moving forward, I am going to express the fullness of my life.