Recess and Detention

A series of recess and detention.

That is what every single day of school felt like for me. That is not to say that I had detention very often, but everything outside of recess felt like detention. I felt totally trapped inside a learning environment. The time just dragged by so slowly. I can remember being so bored that it physically hurt.

The good news is that I loved recess so much that it all seemed pretty tolerable. I frigging love recess. When I am in my environment, there are minimal rules in place, and no one to tell me what to do, I am free. I love freedom. I love having time to do whatever it is that I want to do. I love the task of taking what I have to do, and turning them into something I enjoy doing. Perspective is the single most important thing in my life. If my perspective is off, everything falls right in line with it.

I have a tendency to get over excited. Over-stimulated. I have been known to get so excited that I throw up. I get so overwhelmed with excitement that my body feels the need to extract some of it, in the form vomit, I guess. It's pretty messed up (but so am I). It makes sense, really. Anyways...

I'm forty years old now, and no longer a child. There is no more grade school. No more detention. No more recess. At least not from the administrative standpoint, there is not.

I am responsible for my own recess, as well as my own detention. No one else determines this. Throughout every moment of every day, I can label whatever it is that I am doing as recess or detention. I do not have that "in-between" function. Either I am really, really doing what I want and enjoy, or am an absolute prisoner of life, who is completely miserable in every kind of way.

I have not lost my child-like excitement, any more than I have matured past feeling like an environment of learning is a torture chamber. I still experience the extremism in all of my emotions. I still dry heave when the threshold of excitement is crossed (calm down, dude).

The only difference today?

I love it.

I love the options I have in freedom and captivity. I love the knowledge that I am not a victim. I enjoy the awareness that comes from the realization that recess or detention is a mindset that I control. To be energetic, easily amazed, and optimistic is a skill which can be practiced. Life is a state of mind which is determined by our attitudes.

The dull and boring lead lives that are dull and boring. The snobbish and unimpressed lead unimpressive lives, and remain in the uncomfortable state of secret admiration and disdain towards others. The apathetic and lazy lead lives that mirror such the same. But what about the energetic?

What kind of lives do the energetic people live?

The optimistic?

The easily-impressed?

What is out there for the person who seeks opportunity and appreciates the hardships that are necessary for success?

I don't think I have the answer to that. I don't think that a forty year old man who still dry heaves every time he gets excited is supposed to have the answers to much of anything.

I will tell you what I do know. If you feel like you are stuck in a perpetual state of detention and there is no recess, there are ways out of that. Getting stuck in a rut is part of life. Staying in a rut is playing the role of a victim, and nobody buys the sob story.

If you want a fascinating life, find the fascination in the life you lead.

Recess today. All day.

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