Waiting to Exhale

Life feels like it's stuck in a bottle. What happened to freedom...freedom to do what one wants, freedom to think and behave the way one wants?

Freedom sounds good but where is it to be found? Freedom of speech, thought... seems like a mirage. Administered in doses at the whims and fancies of others, I am let out of the bottle once in a while just to be bottled again.

Life seemed so different when in college... the world was there to conquer and life was raring to break free. Then life took another turn... I made choices and chugged along those chosen paths. Twenty years on, life looks, feels different. Things that made sense back then don't anymore.

Twenty years have zipped past and I have a lot to show for the time gone by. A house, a family, money in the bank. Yet why do I feel bankrupt emotionally? I have everything yet seem to have nothing. There is a vacuum. And there is nothing else.

If given a chance and the time gone by would I do things differently? I don't know. I may , I may not.

There should be more to life than the routine. One has to feel the excitement of walking on new roads, taking unknown turns... free from dependence while taking decisions, freedom to take those decisions minus the variables attached.

I know all will say that's ridiculous. Maybe so, but is walking on chartered waters the meaning of life? We claim to reward genius, innovation, the ability to do the same things differently. But do we really do so? Can I turn my life 360 degrees without being called selfish? I don't think so.

You will say that's life. I ask is this how life is supposed to be? Who decided that we are part of a larger gameplan? I may have taken a path in life back then, but why am I forced to walk those same paths day after day? Don't I have the liberty to change things around without being accused of treachery, selfishness, cruelty?

We formed laws to create order. But did we want laws to rule out lives? You can do this as it is legal. You can't do this because it is illegal. And I am not talking about wanting to blow up people or steal or maim. Is life one never-ending treadmill on which once you climb, you can't get down?
Nothing makes sense anymore. Living in the moment is fiction. In life we end up living other peoples' lives, dreams... and in the process lose our sleep and the dreams turn into nightmares. Is this life? My thoughts may sound bizzare to most of you, but can most deny having such thoughts. Yes, most may feel comfortable locking the genie back in the bottle..I don't.

I am just Waiting to Exhale.