The Jump or Why I Quit

Ask any child what she wants to be when she grows up, and you will hear all the answers you can think of. From an astronaunt to a butcher, a hairdresser or an architect. We are all constantly aspiring to become someone.

I cant tell you if that someone will stay the same or if it will change several times till adulthood. But I can tell you one thing. I assume that from gathering all those dreams up you will hear little about any conception of having a superior. Of being an employee. Children dreams are always a champion’s dream. Whatever they will do, they will do it best.

I find it perplexing then, when virtually every child with a dream of being something grand eventually becomes an employee of a person who is in some -and many- ways superior in that child’s chosen proffesion.

Undersatndable. Reasonable. Even sensible you might say. Hell, i said that. I was that child! And I was convinced I had kinda even made it. Having a mentor to guide you and teach you whilst you get payed for the value in time you spent at the office. Then you grow. You get better. So the substitute for spending your time building someone else’s company (read dream) gets bigger. You may even get more benefits.

That voice that you call reason is telling you that you basically have it pretty well off. Why fix something that ain’t broken, right? Why even listen to that other voice in your head that urges you to start your own business?

Now I can’t tell you what will make you push through the doors, but for me, it was the call of freedom. Realizing I am not really. Free that is. I started longing it.

Freedom of being a master of my own time. Now I know it is difficult to start on your own in any circumstances and I am also very well aware that I have my life to spend in gratitude knowing I could have had a way tougher start. But this isn’t a story about how I overcame my trying times. It is a summary of how I overcame a comfortable life.

A comfortable life is, the way I look at it now, a dangerous pitfall because in itself it is not even that bad. Nothing hurts, nothing aches. It’s good and it’s fun. But there is something missing. And I think we all know it deep down. I know I knew it. That’s why I used all the wonderful and many distractions there are in the modern world.

So what changed? Funny as this might sound. I started reading books that made me think about myself. Eventually, it was just impossible to be anything other completely honest with myself. I didn’t want to just be fun. I started to feel the need to feel alive. So I quit.

It doesn’t really make sense why leave a great CV behind, why quit an amazing job, why move away from a stunning capital of the east, why embark upon something you have no idea if it will work out, and especially why deliberately put yourself in a possible harms way, when you don’t need to.
So why again? Because when you quiet your mind you realize there is only one thing in life you need to do. That is, live out your dreams and try to make your 5-year-old self proud.

So why do the jump from comfortable to uncomfortable? Because it will make you proud of yourself.

And there ain’t nothing better than that my friends.