Choose Life

Friday 1.30pm

At lunchtimes I like to sit outside. Under the bright sun there is just me and the birds, the blackbirds, mynah birds and occasionally a flock of sparrows passing through. Sitting there I look at the birds and wonder about them, what do they have. Just themselves really, and the grass and the sun, which we all have to share. And what do I have. Well, the clothes I am wearing and my lunch. Same as the blackbirds really. Anything else ? Time ? The days must just stretch out ahead of the birds but I only have this hour here before going back to work. And pressure, I can feel it inside me, I don't want to go back to work but must. I have a mortgage to pay, food to buy, all the trappings of modern life. Modern human life that is. A man called Maslow had a theory about a hierachy of needs. It started at the bottom with the most basic needs - food and shelter, which need to be attained before moving up the pyramid to more advanced things like creativity and charity. And yet for all my supposedly advanced humanity I spend most of my time at the bottom of this pyramid. Looking at these birds I cannot say that I have achieved any more than they have, and I certainly cannot say I am any more " advanced " than them. Deep down I have a yearning for a simpler life. It would a brutal life, yes, it would be cold, wet and painfull but I would gladly take that if it meant losing this constant, sucking tiredness that I wade through at the moment.

Yea right you'll say, dream on, you'll never do it, but none of us knows what we are capable of, and dreams contain the seeds of change, it is where it all starts.