Conscious Living for Young People

Clearly, this is not a lifestyle anyone really aspires to. Nobody gets out of college and says to themselves, "Ah yes, now I can chain myself to a desk, scrape by from paycheck to paycheck until I make enough that I can burden myself with a crippling mortgage so I never have the freedom to travel, and give up all my hobbies and passions in pursuit of the 'American dream.'" If you did say that, you are scaring me.

The problem is, that path is the easy way, because it is what society wants us to do. By following that path, we pay the most in taxes, get in the most debt, and have the least chance of upsetting the status quo. Thus, we grease the gears of the system.

The key is to avoid getting into that situation in the first place. That's the fight I've been undertaking since I went into college, without really knowing it. And I think that is what this blog has been all about from the beginning; chronicling my struggle to stay true to my beliefs about living free with awareness and by my own standards. Articles I've written on that topic have consistently garnered the best response from my readers. Thus, I have decided to make a new start to my blogging career.

Blogging for Freedom

I'm still deciding on a title, but the tagline of this new blog will be "The Young Person's Guide to Conscious Living." After all, regardless of whether you care about the environment, your health, or the dolphins, what matters most is that we maintain our ability to live with intent and purpose, rather than let ourselves fall into the rut of the easy, the path of least resistance offered so seductively by our society. So I will blog about that: the mindset and inspirational ideas necessary to keep yourself mentally and spiritually liberated, filling your head with dangerous and subversive ideas such as, "never, ever, ever give up on your dreams, no matter how out there," and, "just because its commonsense/everybody knows its true/obvious doesn't mean it's right," and "hold out for a job that preserves your freedom, don't just jump at the first steady job that comes your way (under certain circumstances)."

The main point is not so much breaking free as resisting the temptation to give in in the first place. Even if you work a 'real job' you can still do so while being conscious of your daily activities and your ultimate goals. How can I have ultimate goals when I'm so young? That's a topic we'll cover as well, but for now, let's say that I firmly believe that even us young whipper-snappers can and often do have a pretty good idea what we want our lives to be, at least in some sort of outline. There is a misconception that we are too young to know, but I think the problem is that our goals tend to be more Romantic. When we hit the real world, we scale back, or pick something manageable, and then we are told that this new goal is our life's calling, based on sound and reasoned wisdom granted by age and experience. Rubbish! Why can't a real goal be Romantic? I know of plenty of people that live ridiculously amazing, thoroughly un-mundane, lives. If it's been done once, it can be done again.

So from here on out, there will be some changes (including, hopefully, a new URL). I ask you to bear with me, and take your dreams seriously.

- (**

Image source: connerdowney on Flickr