Thursday, April 11, 2013

Doing it wrong

Have you ever thought of running away and pretending to be someone else? Ever get the feeling that you'd rather not be you any more, that things just really aren't working out very well as you, and that if you just went somewhere else, changed your name and lived another life, things might go better?

Ever wanted to be one of those people you hear about on TV who just walk away one day from their lives, get on a bus or a train and get off at some random spot and tell the world they're someone no one has ever heard of? The TV FBI (I don't know what the real FBI says about it) says that people "disappear" all the time. You hear it in murder mystery shows: "He might have just not wanted to be a stockbroker any more. Thousands of people just walk away from their lives every year, it doesn't mean they've been killed..."

Ever have the feeling that you've pretty much been doing everything wrong, or never really knew what to do or how to live all this time, and just want to go back to the point where it all went wiggy and fix it?

A long time ago, a smart friend of mine gave a piece of advice to another friend of mine who was having a difficult time adjusting to existence. He said, "If you hate your life, don't kill yourself; kill your life."

She took the advice, sold all her stuff, and got a job as a cook on a marine biology/cartography research ship in South America. She later married the captain and has spent the rest of her time since then ferrying marine biologists back and forth from Chile to the Galapagos Islands.

I've heard Dubrovnik is fantastic in the spring.



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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

So she left the perpetual Canadian winter, and moved to Italy, to dwell in the sunshine, among the bones of apostles and really bad drivers.

Hilary Jane Margaret White said...

Yeah, but I brought all of you lot with me...

Ingemar said...

Yes.

Teresa B. said...

Yes.
Not really enjoying the teenage years.

Anonymous said...

I guess that's the appeal of the French Foreign Legion to many young men. Don't like your life? Want a new beginning? Child support and alimony getting you down? There's a place for you in Marseille, so long as you don't mind doing another government's dirty work.

Unknown said...

The problem is you can only pretend to be someone else and that only works for a little while.

Have you ever read The Maltese Falcon? There's a little story within the story about a guy named Flitcraft.

http://fallingbeam.org/beam.htm