School's Out Forever - Life Experience Is The Best Teacher

Life experience is a priceless commodity and grossly undervalued in our modern society. A young man or woman today is praised for making wise educational and career choices and encouraged to buy a home, build a career or business and start a family. Taking some time to travel before starting college is acceptable if it's for a 'reasonable' amount of time, as long as they get back to getting serious about their life goals.

Most people think year-long vacations are foolish and just a waste of time that would be better spent investing in one's future. I beg to differ.

But before I explain why I believe traveling all over the world is never a waste of time, let me remind one to consider that a young man or woman fresh out of high school (or in some cases college) has no real idea of what they would really be happy doing for the rest of their lives yet. How could they? They haven't experienced enough things in life to discover what they truly like and don't like and what makes them happy. What makes them shine?

They may think they know and have good intentions but life doesn't give a shit about good intentions and people change. What was a great idea at twenty is unbearable at thirty and a living hell at forty, unfortunately, there is little support in our society to help them discover what really moves them and inspires them to live meaningful lives.

Making money, buying a house, starting a family, these are worthy endeavors and trekking across the globe in search oneself or some imaginary meaning of life is frivolous and foolhardy. That's the pitch I have been told anyways and I just didn't buy it.

Young people are almost pushed into making serious life choices before they have even had a chance to enjoy their autonomy and any 'ideas' they get to maybe live a little before putting their nose to the occupational grindstone to earn a 'living' is discouraged and frowned upon.

School is nothing more than an indoctrination process, preparing young minds to follow instructions, teaching them what to think but not how to think, and molding them into obedient workers who are easily controlled. Schools are machines feeding the workforce with the human 'resources' it needs to grow corporate profits.

There is nothing wrong with investing in one's future and I'm not condemning it. I'm just pointing out that there are other investments one can make in oneself that show profits besides monetarily and are just as valid and valuable. Health and happiness are priceless investments to hold long term, for example, and the ability to call on one's resourcefulness in a variety of circumstances that are less than ideal is invaluable and literally have saved lives.

I have spent the better part of my youth resisting any notion that life must be planned or it will be a life of struggle, misery, and astring of missed opportunities. Through my continuing research and dedicated diligence, I have found that living a less structured life opens up possibilities that would have gone unnoticed had I planned every minute detail of my whole life out ahead of time.

That is not to say that I had no goals in my life. Goals are good but not at the expense of living fully in each moment. To reach some of my goals sacrifices had to be made and a price paid, but I think it is important to remember that each day is a precious gift if we only approach it with that attitude. The right attitude can pay dividends even when we fail.

It's interesting that the idea of being in the present moment is also the same word for a gift. Present, as in this moment, and present as in a gift. We only need to recognize right now as a present and to unwrap it and be thankful and share this moment with those around us.

Many find being present to be uncomfortable and constantly search for distractions to fill their attention, anything to avoid being in the present moment with themselves and their thoughts. Some turn to drugs, relationships, careers.

I've discovered that the genesis of creating what you really want in your life begins precisely there, alone and present in the moment and with your focused thoughts. Like tuning into a radio frequency, that focus opens up a channel to begin receiving what you want from life. Unseen forces conspire to manifest your thoughts into reality so it's important to be aware of the importance of tuning into what it is you want and only what you want. Not, as is often mistakenly done, in what you don't want.

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My life has involved a lot of traveling and living in different countries and interacting with a wide range of cultures and customs. These experiences have shaped my perspectives in ways that are not understood by people raised on monoculturalism.

When most people were planning their careers and attending college, I was touring in a rock band. As my friends from school were getting married and settling down into a typical suburban lifestyle, I was exploring tropical jungles with indigenous tribes, growing ganga in the Humboldt mountains to fund my personal chemical and geographical expeditions, and dropping myself into random foreign countries just to taste the experience. You can read about adventures in books but having the lead role in your own life while on a globe-trotting adventure has more tangible value than collecting college credits, and has landed me jobs

When I was twelve years old my parents decided to send me to France to spend some time with my grandmother. They pulled me out of school for four months (so cool) and put me on a plane to Paris where my grandmother picked me up. We traveled around Europe visiting castles and drove through the Pyrenees mountains in the south of France and continued on to Alicante Spain where I tagged along with my grandmother's brother on his fishing boat bringing back the day's catch each afternoon.

I promise you that I learned more in those four months than anything my friends were learning from books back at school. Books are great and I consume them constantly but a classroom is not the only place you can learn or consume books. Life is its own classroom and each day is another page turner full of new discoveries.

Many of my heavily in debt, college educated friends, if they were lucky enough to find jobs after graduating, are too financially strapped to do anything that would make them miss a mortgage payment. When I see the drudgery on their worn faces and the price they have paid for domestic security, my heart feels for them. I have a deep respect for the sacrifices they have made for their families and careers, but a part of me wonders when this great life they have worked so hard to achieve will begin.

I may not hold a degree from college (I did get a music business degree) but I do possess a knowledge one would not find in a classroom and have pieced together the lessons learned through much trial and error and observation into a profitable and enjoyable life.

My main guiding principle is to choose to do things that I get to do rather than have to do. This has worked well for me and never let me down. When it is a joy to wake up and get to go to work then it is not really working at all, is it? When you are not staring at a painfully slow clock wondering when you'll be released from this prison you created and instead, the time flies by and you didn't even notice, then you are doing what you get to do, not what you have to do.

Why would anyone want to live any other way? How could so many have fallen into the rat-race trap? That's not for me to say.

Everything has a price and the price of living your dream is a lack of security. Security is highly overrated and we're never really as secure as we lead ourselves to believe. Safe secure jobs can be stripped from us overnight and a split second can change the course of one's life forever. Security also has a price and that is freedom. In fact, the most secure place of all is a maximum security prison.

When there is no financial safety net to rely on there is also no cap on the income one can make. That's why I like working at commission jobs only or investing in myself and in business ideas. Even if I fail, I learn something a college professor could not teach me in a classroom and whatever money lost was worth the education.

Too often people cling to an illusion of safety and are reluctant to go out on a limb only to regret having not done so when they get older. I vowed to never be one of those people and so far things have always worked out.

The investment in living my life rather than planning my life has evolved over the course of time and will continue to evolve, but one thing I have learned from all of these life experiences is to stop asking for permission from other people to do what my heart is calling for me to do. Stop caring what others think about my choices and to live each moment as fully as possible and to just go for it, whatever it is.

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