Alternative Lifestyle?

Out of high school,we feel awe struck by what we're gonna do when we get a job.Boy,am I going to ... .But there's another side to it.It comes up years later.Did you take the right wagon out? Here's one man's story.

Brian was the manager for a machinery manufacturer.As he went to work one morning ,as has been custom all these years,he increasingly began to resent what he saw as the clouding of personal honesty demanded by competitive business.Even worse he hardly knows his wife nor the children as he gets 'locked away 'from them for up to 5 days on business trips oftentimes.He began to see that the nearer he got to the board of director's job,the less he liked the sort of lives those above him in the Firm were living.He began to lose the confidence that he can play it differently when he got into the board." I don't want to change my personality.I have this conviction that it was unnecessary to behave badly or stay put in a compulsory charade of hypocrisy in order to be successful.I prefer family life to business entertainment,"  he thought hard to himself.
That evening , when he got home , he told his wife ," I don't think I can stand this until I retire." But the more they thought of it the more an abyss of fear opened up- how can you cut moorings without even knowing which point of the financial compass you are heading for ? The job had afforded the lifestyle they have now.Everyone has come to cling to it's safety.
"There's an old proverb," he told her, " that every cock is proud on it's own dunghill.I have been so obsessed crowing that I forgot the hypocrisy that our lives have come to become." Letting go of the job they were clinging to,they felt a curtain has lifted on something already there: a new phase of life.It would be better to do it now when they still have their wits and age than later they thought.

Together they found a small bed & breakfast business close to a beach.Since then what has increased over time is Brian's ability to make do on a shrinking income . But it opened new doors.They make their own bread and beer.They rebuilt the extended family ties.Though the kids have less pocket money than the neighbours ,yet there isn't any resentment from them.Bonding together again after all these years has churned a kind of hardy happiness that has rubbed off on them."What we have swopped is not money but a way of life, togetherness.It is absolutely essential that I should do what I am doing."

Where you are now are you being true to yourself.Do you get to use your talents and enthusiasms or has your boss plugged you into a round hole ? It's NEVER too late to ask the question nor jump off the mellee of the rat race. Remember the words of H.G.Wells : "Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race."

A Bicycle Ride