Breakfast of Champions

Leaning on the bus stop sign post I took the last bite of the candy bar. A few bits of peanut sticking to my teeth in the goo of caramel swirling in my mouth. It was still cool for a summer morning. The sun was still getting ready to announce the heat of the day. I was late to work, again, but I knew I had time before the bus arrived, it was always running late, too. I took a swig of Coke. Enjoying the cool rim of the glass bottle against my lips. Then pulled out a cigarette and lit it up. Sucking in the fumes of stale tobacco. The breakfast of champions, I thought with a smirk and a sigh. Only another 40 years of dragging myself to work every day. The thought made my heart sink. Any hope for joy vanished. Looking out over a patch of barren urban landscape, weeds the only green sprouting up in the dirt, I wondered how I was going to get through all those years with my soul intact. 

Here I am all those decades later. I don’t consume my breakfast of champions or wait for the bus, but I still work. I’ve had countless jobs between here and there. Now, I can say I have a career, but I’ve always felt a disconnect from what I do to pay the bills, from where my heart is. In the past few years, I’ve learned to make peace with working at a job. Infusing the day with my spiritual practices. Gratitude for the income and healthcare. Looking for the best in the people I work with. Finding moments to pause and remember who I truly am, that I am the I am expressing itself through me. 

But I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that there is something else I need to do. That there is another way I’m intended to spend my time. A better way to live my life, to earn a living, pay the bills, put food on the table. The politics of the world has only made that feeling intensify. The actual tasks of my job seem less important than the relationships with the people I interact with. There is a growing awareness in my being that the real measure of my success is how connected I am to Life, the force that animates everything. It is vital to let go of whatever I’m clinging to and be in the flow of that experience. It’s not about the job, or striving for material success. Living life is more than the limitations I have allowed the socio/economic system to impose on me. My freedom lies in a place that no one can ever steal from me.