Step into your life.

Standing beside a road watching a point of no particular interest on the other side.

Eight lanes of speeding traffic zip past, divided by a thin strip of concrete in the centre. Tons of speeding steel and plastic charging on like migrating wildebeest to who knows where.

Who is leading, who is following, does it even matter?

Our early years are characterised by supervision and parental guidance, boundaries are implanted within our brains and expectations are set for the way our society is expected to function.

Regardless if we are living tribally in the sub Sahara or in a bustling city there are norms that will be perpetual from generation to generation. Families and communities are formed of co-habiting individuals in an agreed behavioural pattern whether written down or just passed down.

Those who refuse to adhere to the expectation and either break the laws or just don’t fit with the constriction placed upon them are forced into a penal situation, isolated or just move away.

The free-for-all that some would teach simply won’t work in any culture that seeks advancement beyond subsistence living. Even the most basic of societies have a mutual respect and interpersonal cooperation that allows them to function in the day to day of this life.

When we arrive at puberty we begin to push those lines which have been imposed upon us in a bid to decipher where we fit into this world.

Some will not ever fit in and spend their lives bouncing from place to place; the majority quickly return to the settled existence of work, marriage and family. This, by necessity must be, in order for our species to continue. Given the space that I allow myself for these blogs I have no room for the inclusion of the multiplicity of alternatives and other main character types that surround us.

The majority are my real area of interest today.

Amongst this vast majority there is a sub group who reach a certain age and just stop. There may be no particular trigger or equally there may be a cataclysmic trigger; they have lost a decade in their thirties and wake up one day in traffic or somewhere wondering what happened to them.

What they decide to next can define the rest of their lives.

For men it often involves a trade in, either vehicle or wife, or an expensive toy to feel alive again.

For women it may be a fling or a makeover.

Thankfully the majority don’t make these rash decisions outwith their own minds, the thought comes and evinced if momentarily entertained it is soon dismissed.

This phenomenon though is very real.

I have been blessed to be given eyes to see what my life truly is in this last year. Aside from any spirit aspect I have been shown the depth of love that exists within my family and what tremendous opportunities that I have been privileged to enjoy.

What I have now been taught is to value these gifts, to ‘see’ them, to step into my own life and live it.

The journey is far from over, but it has begun and I no longer want the highway of life to separate me from my life.

I choose increasingly to be in it.