a cry for change

Here goes the paradigm of the “American way”. Graduate from college. Buy a black suit. Get your fancy schmansy resume compiled and contrived with your laundry list of “successful accomplishments”. Get hired by a big swinging corporation with lusty lures of benefit packages and stock options. Decisively spend the rest of your life continually updating your resume with your latest negligible accomplishments and corporate awards so that you may prolong your work for the corporate warlords that have zero appreciation for anything much more than funding the man above--who in turn funds the man above him. You continually invent excuses of why you can’t make it to the gym or why your “bad knee” prevents you from running. How you would love see those last 10lbs dissipate--as you chomp into a Krispy Kreme. How you would love to get back to skiing, playing the piano, or writing poetry, but you just can’t find the time in between your nightly sitcom reruns. How Tuesday comes and you say to yourself, “When I wake up tomorrow…I can say that the day after tomorrow is Friday!”. How you are living each day for your next day away from that office. How you only see your vision, your truth, and your passions in your dreams and in the traps of your mind. Every moment that slips away, those hopes collecting a bit more dust.

I have succumbed to the “American Way”. I have fallen captive. Thank heavens I have found my white flag now before I have lost too much. I have played the fence for some time now. In the eyes of the “men above”, I am the perfect soldier. I am a workhorse. Proactive. I am diligent. Confident. I blow out my sales numbers. I am a leader. I am professional and well put together. I am aggressive and far from obnoxious. My clients love me. I get the job done…well. I am attractive. Fit. Secure. Poignant.
So where in lies the problem?

I am checking my excitement at the door. I am stifling and suffocating. Shame on me. Dirty money is inanimate. To surrender your inner peace is hellacious. To deprive your zeal is corrupt.

I hate that damn black suit. And that blue one. It looks terrible over my tri shorts. My high heels feel like crap on my beautifully blistered feet. How dare I subject my calves to those horrid shoes after ripping 220 watts for nearly 2 hours. My blouses don’t hang very eloquently over my sports bra. Ponytails don’t work well in “Corporate America”. That’s 45 min less training…forfeited to a blow-dryer. The back seats of my Chrysler 300 are inked with chain grease. My trunk littered with cycling shoes, extra tri shorts, goggles, jugs of HEED….packets of Recoverite….and of course my signature cowboy hat and my pop-tent. God help me if my boss decides to come for a “ride in the field”. I’d have to come up with a real good doosie of an excuse as to why Tri gear has taken precedence over medical samples and hospital records. I abhor the dichotomy of it.

I find little solace in lending my brains, sharing my ideas, and teasing out solutions for a cause that I do not believe in. You have to believe. You have to believe in your cause. You have trust that there are many more “American Ways”. That cookie cutters come in a variety of shapes. That is the beauty of it. The freedom. The freedom to change. The freedom to pursue. There are those that lead the company and there are those that work for those leaders. If you invest yourself in an arena that you believe in; if you invest your convictions appropriately, then you will position yourself in nothing less than a position of leadership. If nothing else, you will simply lead by example.
I would like opportunity to embrace the ideas. I want to lend to the cause. I want to spread the word. Fuel is fire. I am in pursuance to ultimately touch the hands, to cultivate a foundation, to strategize and collaborate, to grow with fervor and dedication, and to execute and stretch the breath of my creativity.

“I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up DOES rejoice”.
-The Shawshank Redemption