It all started when I realized that I heard more stories in the last year about people who took off to "find their true selves", "search for the truth" or "look for the meaning of life" than I have ever heard in my life. I guess in the past, I've always heard about it in movies ; the middle-aged American millionaire who achieved everything in life and feels empty sells his entire company and use the money to buy a yacht to tour the world. Or the Japanese wiz-kid who retires at the age of 30 with his billions and decides to use the rest of his life as a chance to make up to the world for the harmful inventions he created. Maybe the European royalty who got so sick and tired of fame, fortune, fast expensive cars and fabulous female companions and went on exploring the meaning of life by sleeping on the street in rags.
But to hear that people doing this search/exploration/adventure..etc are people I know (or at least can relate to at some level), either self employed or successful employees, at the peak of their careers, taking a year off their daily routine to go explore. That makes me wonder. What is it that they are expecting to find? And why can't they find it here? And if they find it where they went searching, why did they come back?
Let's take an example, if you meet some guy who keeps on preaching about how he really found the meaning of life in the eyes of the Ethiopian children whom he helped through the famine. Won't it sound like a cliche phrase from a best selling autobiography? It's like someone went to help those children in order to find an experience which he can sell in his autobiography. I mean, why didn't you get the feeling feeding your own children back at home? Do they have to be strangers? Do they have to be African, the poor underdeveloped continent? And if you actually found the meaning of life over there in Ethiopia, why come back? Why not stay there and continue helping ? I don't know about you. But it feels fake and unrealistic to me.
Anyway.. got to go now.. more on that later
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