The Range of Vision

Recently as the due date for business school applications has crept up it has gotten me thinking about my career goals. I had to write an essay as to why I am choosing a business degree over other major choices and it actually got me excited about pursuing a degree in business. It made me realize that as narrow-focused as the approach to business may be and as narrow-focused as many people become in the business school do to the rigorous coursework, if you leave let yourself have just even a little bit of give, a degree in business can open up so much range in your scope of vision. It can give you the foundation to do so much.

So then I have to ask myself, has my jewelry business been narrowing my scope of vision and will it continue to? As much as I love everything is has opened up for me and I would not take back what it has done for me. It has helped me to learn so many skills in life and helped me to mature. My jewelry business has given me so many experiences in dealing with both failure and success that not many people have experienced at this point in their lives. But I also have to wonder if it has kept me from experiencing other things. It surely has taken a lot of time that I otherwise could have spent doing other worthwhile things, but would that have benefited me more. I do not know and I never will, but I do not regret the past. I just have to wonder what I should do about the future. Should I continue to spend my time trying to grow this business, to follow the dream of becoming an inspiring jewelry artist with a well-known name? or is there another calling for me? Am I limiting myself by continuing to follow this passion and by not allowing myself to follow other passions?

In the Search for Fear: Part 2

I have been trying to pay close attention to the experience I have with the feeling of fear. Instead of getting the feeling and passing it along with everything else that I must put behind me in order to move on, I have been trying to consciously put it to mind. In one case, during the reading for this class last night I noted my fear of the future. I have always known that my own future especially my own near future and what it beholds in terms of success in school and in the "real world" per say, give me some angst, and thus, I must have some fear inside of me. It is a combination of fears arising from the competition that is out there, fear of failure, fear of not doing something that will make me happy or in that case people in my personal life happy, fear of never finding the perfect love, and so on and so on. Day to day those fears influence many aspects of my life and I am highly aware of these influences. I am not alone in that fear, I see it all around me and being in that kind of environment seems to do much to cultivate even stronger anxieties, but the reading last night made me aware of a whole other fear I have of the future. I have fear for what technology will advance to in my life time and in the life time of my children. It is a fear of uncertainty. It arises from a number of questions that I ask: what new jobs will arise in the next 50+ years? if technology continues to advance faster and faster, will I even be able to keep up with it? what are the health implications that technology is placing on us? (I already know that most of my friends and relatives and maybe even myself will have cancer unless there is a miracle in the health industry and as well we will all have carpel tunnel (therefore, I suggest that anyone who is going into the medical field take a focus on hands)) What will become of our children's generation (as the access to the information we have at our finger tips is just as easily at their finger tips thus the younger and younger they start to be tempted-- into cell phones, into sex, into drugs and alcohol, into mindless conversation.. and the list goes on). In simplest form I fear the future for it is a combination of 7 billion imaginations and counting. That is scary.

In the Search for Fear: Part I

I find it difficult to specifically identify my fears. Asking myself the question, "what do I fear?" seems a very complex one to address. I know I have fear, for if I had not fear, I would have no love, no hate, no anxiety, all of which I do feel. Oddly, I do not fear my own death and never have. By no means do I have any desire to die for there are so many tasks, so many paths I have yet to take and so many experiences I have yet to have.

One fear I can specify is other people dying; especially those that I love and those that I hate. I would hate to lose those that I love, but not love to lose the ones I hate. Don't get me wrong I do not hate many; but those that I hate, I fear to lose because I feel compelled to make them better people before they die.

While on the subject of death (which may I say is an awful one to start on), I would like to note an observation I made today. I noticed a girl sitting next to me had an obtrusive scar that slashed through her wrist. It made me realize how uncomfortable I am with the idea of wishing to die. It is one thing to not fear death, a whole other to try to impose it upon yourself or someone else. One reason I do not fear it because the fear of it would hinder my ability to enjoy life. I cannot comprehend wishing death upon myself because everything in life is fluid. There is no situation that is so ugly that there is no direction to turn and all in sight is the end.

As anxious, stressed, unhappy as I could ever be, there is always something that could make me happy. Is that not logic? It seems so to me and I would like to say that I could arise at a situation in which a person would feel otherwise, but I can't. Even if I had nothing, I would have something. That something might be conversation with a stranger, a church to sit in for warm and community, a passion to turn to for activity... I know many students have taken their lives due to their own narrow-minded route to success but if they only saw the simple things that make them happy, if only they could have looked around them and seen nature, if only...

It is so sad.