Life is a Highway
Every once in a while, a friend suggests that I should write a book. I'm always a bit amused by the assertion, and often ask why they think so.
"You have so many interesting and crazy stories!"
"You've lived such an interesting life"
"You've lived like 3 or 4 different lives it seems. People need to hear about all that."
I can't imagine writing a book. Actually, no, I can imagine it, and have added that activity to my bucket list. I can't imagine writing a book that anyone would read. I don't think my life has been that crazy. There are people out here in the world who've done some amazing shit. They've scaled things, and flown to and fro, they've done amazing things with amazing backgrounds to enhance the story. I just think of myself as a lucky kid who's had the opportunity to play some great life experiences to the bone, and fortunate enough that when my hand was played down to the last card, I was able to easily step into another stream of consciousness and move on. I often feel like I'm unnaturally lucky in life I some ways, but then I think about how I always talk about how a positive energy and outlook can make good things happen, and a negative karma, if you will, brings more bad things your way.
I think the reason people find my life interesting is because I live it rather fearlessly. The great secret of life is that it is going to end. You won't live forever, so do you spend every moment trying to prolong life, or to make it interesting? I've found that sometimes those things can be at odds with each other.
For example, I spent 9 months in Afghanistan in the U.S. Army. However, most people don't know that I could have avoided that deployment. During training, I injured my hip, pretty badly Walking was a purely painful negotiation. It came down to he point where the higher ups said "Do you think you can finish training? If so, we will get you a desk job when we get to the theater of operation." I said "Woohoo!" and I grimaced and finished training. When we got to Afghanistan, the desk job evaporated, and I ended up doing a mix of FOB security and being on a combat team.
I moved to a rural town in Alaska on a few days notice, and recently attempted to do the same in moving to Dubai. Unfortunately the opportunity fell through, but if it popped up right this second, I would take it. That, in my opinion, is what life is about... having fun, being daring. Yes, mistakes will be made, lessons learned, and regrets had I am sure, but I still plan on squeezing out every drop that life has to offer. To me, looking 10 years down the road and seeing that nothing in my life has essentially changed; the same place, the same people, same circumstances.... oh, that just doesn't do it for me. It's just not how my brain works, or what appeals to my sensibilities.
If life IS a highway, I wanna see every rest stop, every sight, taste every cuisine, and see every face. I want to live life until I'm too old to, and then when my time comes to die, I want to be able to say "Well, I did a lot of cool shit, roll me over, pull the plug, put some good music on, and put some dirt on me, I'm done!"
I guess in my eyes, I haven't done half the cool stuff I want to, or intend to. But I suppose when I look around, there are a lot of people whose fears keep them from doing many of the things I do. Hmm... maybe at some point, I will feel that my life is bookworthy. Maybe.