A little known fact about me.? I once helped liberate fourteen animals from a labratory that was affiliated with a major drugstore chain.? It was all very covert and nondestructive.? We saved fourteen animals and gave them good homes.? I hope I don’t go to jail for admitting this online.? It was many, many years ago and I was very young - certainly wasn’t the master mind of the operation.? But I went.

My point in divulging any of this to you is because my identity (if you haven’t noticed from previous blogs) is becoming somewhat illusive to me these days.? I don’t care to be a fist raising activist or someone who is righteously ethical - though that was an outfit I wore for many years.? But, where is the line?? How do we creep into being a reasonable adult with a balanced perspective about their lifestyle without entirely becoming a sell out?? My fear is that I am not becoming “balanced” but lazy.?

I have started taking long walks in the morning.? 530am is my target rising time - though it is hard to get out of bed before 6am.? During these long walks alone, I have been thinking.? Thinking about my past.? Thinking about my present.? Obsessively thinking about my future and what kind of person I am turning into.? I have also started to think about who I am not any longer.? Everyone around me seems so pleased to know that I have “loosened up” - I eat fish, I wear leather, I had turkey for Thanksgiving, I drive something very similar to a small SUV (alright, it is a small SUV..), I let my kids watch TV now (only PBS but, still…).? I am far from a perfectionist - seriously.? I never adhered to a “no-TV-vegetarian-econocar-driving” lifestyle because I was a perfectionist about my lifestyle.? Admittedly, I did it out of guilt.? I couldn’t bear having any responsibility for destruction of any kind and, when I had kids, I didn’t want them to be comfortable living an overindulged, destructive lifestyle either.? So, what gives?? What switch got flipped in me?? Am I being lazy or just figuring out how to work within the constraints of the society around me??

I guess, mostly, I just want to know why I can’t turn it off.? I see all these people, every day, living so simply and easily.? They glide through their day,without even an inkling of a thought for their actions and behaviour.? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be like that, I just want to find a middle ground.? Somewhere, there has got to be a middle ground.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 30th, 2006 at 10:57 am and is filed under Lifestyles, Daily Living, Mental Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.