E-mail to a friend

This is an e-mail I recently sent to a friend of mine who was feeling down recently due to a few people making judgments about her life. i started off innocently enough trying to cheer her up but then flew into a Buddhist rant about the meaning of life and suffering and about doing what you know to be right even if everyone disagrees.

Anyway by the end it was more like a weblogg than an e-mail so I thought I might post it. Please note it has been edited a bit because she'll get cranky if I leave to much detail about her there!

Hi there,

I hope your feeling better today!

it's funny you should say that people thought you were
running away and stuff when you went to Australia as I
know so many people who get that same thing.

Especially when I was living in the UK. So many people there would tell me that they either felt like they should be at home being grown up or that their friends/family were hassling them about it. At that time they were pretty much the same age as you (26), so if it makes
you feel any better you are very far from alone.

I think its because people have this really set idea about what we should be doing and at what age and no one ever stops to think that maybe there is another way. (except for those that go and travel or do something that helps them really experience the world!)

People don't realize that this idea they have about what we should be doing (i.e. school, uni, job marriage, kids retirement) is very cultural and isn't by any means perfect or a guarantee that if we do it we will be happy. Usually I find that sticking to the schedule is actually a huge
excuse, a way to hide from life.

Rather than doing anything important or difficult or challenging they just do what everyone else is doing. So many of my friends went to uni after school. Not because they wanted to study but because they didn't know what else to do and every one was doing it. Also a lot of them said to me that they couldn't come overseas with me because they were worried if they did that they wouldn't want to go to uni after.

Sounds like they shouldn't have gone in the first place!

What this all equals is that these people live their life by the timetable that their families/society set out for them. they never discover new things and they die before they have the chance to find out who they really are.

Let me give you an example........

There is a girl who wants to go to France. After school she wants to spend a year in France but her
family convince her that she should really go to uni first. So she does, thinking that she'll go after uni.

Anyway by the time she finishes uni she has this boyfriend who drives her nuts but she still wants to keep him and she doesn't have any money anyway so she decides to work for a year, get a bit of work experience and save to go to France.

A few years pass and she's so caught up in the OC and Charmed, her and her boyfriend have put a deposit on a house and she really doesn't have any money left over to save for this trip she wanted.

Next thing there are kids on the way and the bills have to be paid so there is no way she is going to be able to make that trip at least while the kids are young.

Once the kids get a bit older her husband leaves her and suddenly she has to raise this family on her own. Its hard and there is no way she'll be able to afford a holiday till after she's paid for the kids education.

Finally the kids are gone she's found a new boyfriend/husband and is seriously considering this
trip to France. the next day she goes out to the travel agent to get the tickets and gets hit by a
bus.

She never made it to France.

Her whole life she felt like something was missing.

Not because she didn't get to go to France but because she was so busy doing stuff she felt she should be doing she never really knew who she was.

This is getting to be a bit of a long e-mail but you get my point. I think that age is no barrier to unhappiness. You should do what you want and experience what you can before the arthritis sets in.

People who criticizes you or who say that your not acting like a grown up are generally baffled and jealous because their life is empty and no matter how much they distract themselves with entertainment, boyfriends, money and ego they still feel empty.

This is a really Buddhist thing but the awful truth is that if you are born your gonna die and although its nice to think that its going to happen when your 90 or something it may happen tomorrow.

Have you done everything you hoped to do in this life? You don't need to scale mountains or learn another language. Just as long as you can say that you are happy with the person who looks at you in the mirror and that you have done things you are proud of and corrected the things you weren't proud of.

I hope this makes you feel better and not depressed. If you think like this when people criticize you, you just feel sorry for them, when you don't get the job you wanted you just let it go as it wasn't right anyway.

Think about what you would do if you found out you were going to die tomorrow and do it today!

Sorry to be a bit D&M,

Speak to you soon!

Erin