“Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.”
-Voltaire
Every time I return from traveling, I get this funky feeling. It feels like everything around me is sterile. Whether I go halfway around the world, or just a few miles away, I always feel the same way when I come back.
When you’re traveling, everything is new, it’s exciting, and the sensory overload fills your brain with dopamine. But when you get back, all of that seems to be taken away. To me, it feels like I’ve stepped back into a cage of routine mundanity.
Showing up at the same time to stare at the same 4 walls every day leads me to believe there’s something about the 9-5 lifestyle that I just can’t get behind. Maybe that’s why I love golf so much.
With golf, nothing is ever the same. No two courses, no two shots, no two conversations are ever the same. The weather, the people, even you aren’t the same. You get to show up whenever you feel like it and take an adventure following a little white ball around a beautiful place. It feels like freedom. Maybe that’s because there’s no walls.
Ironically though, we build these walls in our own minds. Even when we’re free to do what we want, we often limit ourselves through our beliefs. We tell ourselves things like, “I’m not capable,” and “I’m not worthy,” when really all we need to achieve our dreams is a slight change in perspective.
Anything you can conceive, you can achieve, but first you have to believe. We must believe that we are fully capable (and most definitely worthy) of escaping that sterile feeling of normalcy, but also understand that everything happening right now is in our best interest and will work itself out at the perfect time.
It’s a delicate balance but we must understand that with a little faith and a lot of hard work we can turn nothing into something. It may be difficult but we must continue to look up if we are to tear down the walls that restrain us.