My father and I got talking about what I do, how do I class myself when the usual question comes up, ‘what do you do?’. If you asked me 5 years ago, the answer would be that I work in Facilities Management, then if the person showed any interest I would talk about whatever role I was doing at the time. When I look back, I think I had allowed my job to define me, which is fine if its your lifes work, not so much if it really only pays your bills and you hide behind the ‘career’ that you are building.
Now I am in a different place, since seeing grief and death close up, the way I want to answer when someone says, ‘What do you do?’ is, I am the peoples coach, I have a desire to support people to be the greatest version of themselves, to advocate the need for emotional intelligence to be on school curriculums, my fostering and the wonderful and funny stories, volunteering work, property management, writing, 30 day challenges, the books I have read that moved me, sunshine people and everything I do this for, travelling where I have been and where I will go, my photography and how it has progressed and where it all started from an unfulfilled bucket list. However, no one answers the question, ‘what do you do?’ like that, because it takes too long for starts! I spoke with the most amazing boss I have had on the telephone recently to catch up, he asked what I had been up to. I touched on a few of the things that I am working on and his answer was, ‘That sounds so exciting, if not a bit unstructured’ or words to that effect. This is a man who encompasses progression and positive attitudes, even he was struggling to see the vision because in truth the answer got too long, it was unstructured and not the ‘norm’. So is that why we choose to live in a certain way, dreaming of things and never doing them, making our lifes work a battle in a job that we only partially enjoy?
In the end, the conversation with my father was concluded with this. In life, we are programmed to live a certain way, we are expected to have children, do a 9-5 job, have a house and all the other things that we grow up with, whether this makes you happy or not, whether you contribute to society for the better or not, that is the expectation. However, what if we can seek more happiness, more love and more kindness to the world by challenging the norms of our ‘acceptable’ and the ‘shortened explanations’ of what is important in our lives. Try it in your life, ask yourself what could or makes you happy and simply do that more. Don’t do it in the way that is expected, do it in the way that makes you happiest.
I have more passion than I have ever had, I am more open to the possibilities of life and death and anything that comes in between than ever before. I do not have a plan until retirement, I will keep changing and evolving, keep saying yes to life. Mostly I will keep being kind to others and grateful for what I have when I have it, because the rewards are then bountiful. Live like tomorrow may not arrive then you will always live to your fullest.