Those are the commencement words of Steve Jobs. But hard it is for the average person today not to live someone else's life or at least be in someone's shadow or on someone else's time unless he or she is rich or self employed or lucky enough to find a job of a lifetime.
Then there's the issue of courage. Is playing it safe really the most dangerous thing one can do? Do I have the courage at my advanced years to pack up my life, dispose of my baggage and move to a new city to start completely over? Nothing holds me here in Baltimore, a city I could take or leave. It's never been overtly kind to me in any ways. In fact upon first moving here I found most of the people self involved and unreciprocating. And when I did find people I liked, they were originally from somewhere other than Baltimore.
The air quality is putrid. Crime escalates. The neighborhood declines. Each year the beltway becomes more overburdened. Yet I stay. Because it's safe. It's familiar. It's easy. It's a rocking chair. A western saddle. A down comforter. An opiate and a chocolate bar. But it's not a life.
Said Rilke, the unlived life, of which one can die.
My kids are grown and I have no elderly family. I'm free as the breeze. I could do any of a million things. I could sell all my possesions live on a sailboat. Move to Montana and raise alpaca and Rocky Mountain ponies. Go to NOLA and open a bookstore/cafe in the Quarter which I could close whenever I wanted. Move to San Fran and enjoy legal pot. Live in the desert and paint like Georgia O'Keefe.
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