Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye. We have officially published more than 30 podcast episodes so far, and I'm going to continue recording more food-for-thought on a regular basis. People tell me they actually revisit certain recordings when they need a boost.
But even if you play a different one each day, there are now enough episodes to cover a full month of listening. I'm extremely grateful that this podcast is still available without commercials, thanks to listeners just like you, who find value in these messages, my monthly emails, online posts, and our books-to-prisons-and-school-program.
They show their support by donating as little as one dollar a month, and if you also find value in what we do, please visit patreon.com/buddhistbootcamp That's patreon.com/buddhistbootcamp A couple of weeks ago, I was on the phone with a tech support agent, and when I asked him where he was located, he said he was in Wisconsin. Whenever people tell me where they live, I ask them why they live where they do. And it's amazing how rarely people say, "Because I absolutely love it here and I can't
"imagine living anywhere else." And when I asked him why he was in Wisconsin? He said, "That's actually a good question, I don't know. I was born and raised here, "and I guess I just never left. My wife and I actually hate it here, and we often talk "about leaving. But, now that you mentioned it, I don't know why we're still here."
Well, this got me thinking... so let's pretend that our life is a road trip in the car, and we start out as toddlers sitting in the backseat with our parents driving. And they teach us what they know about the road, they prepare us for possible hazards up ahead, and they point us in the direction they would like us to take on our own someday. And around 18 years of age, we get out of our parents' car
and into our own. We either take the on-ramp they have chosen for us to begin our journey, we mimic their driving style, their pace, and their destination, or what I did, we peel out and speed in the opposite direction. Either way, we are now in control of our lives, where we go, and how fast we get there.
More often than not it's a combination of both actually. It's a complex mixture of our own personal drive, parental influence, some peer pressure, fear, compromise, circumstantial obstacles, and a dash of luck, synchronicity, and fate, depending on what you believe in. Decades later, some people are still on the same road that their parents have chosen for them, while others have taken so many detours and dirt roads not listed on any map.
Millions of people, however, abandon their vehicles altogether, and they get on a bus, or a train instead. They just sit there, and they just ride it to wherever it goes. They have essentially relinquished all control over the speed or destination of their lives, sometimes until the very last stop. In many ways that last choice is very appealing. I mean everything is predetermined, there are very little surprises, and you can just surf the web
or watch TV while the conventional train chugs along. And in the old days, all we ever saw were people who were immediately around us, so we always felt like everyone was on the same train as us, or driving down the same road as us. We were in a little bubble. But now, we have social media and YouTube, which means we regularly see pictures and videos that other people share from their own path,
and suddenly, we're exposed to how different life can be. The moment we stop blaming other people for the way we choose to live our lives, and sadly, we most frequently blame our parents or our kids, we discover that a lot more options are available to us than we ever thought possible.
Some people have more than others, and I'm not suggesting there is a right or wrong way to go about life, only that it's important to remember two things: one: at some point we made a choice, and two: every single day we make another choice to either keep making that choice or to change direction. It's important that we never feel stuck or victimized, even if we've been on the same bus for many years, or on a road that we wish
was different. First, acknowledge that at some point you chose to be on that conventional train, for example, and then admit that you've also chosen to stay on it for as long as you have. But as of this moment, right now, do you choose to stay the course, or will you actually choose to get off the bus? I think that we need a reminder to check in with ourselves every once in a while. Are we still living the life we want?
Is our job fulfilling us the way we thought it would? Is there anything on the back burner that needs to move to the front, or maybe something in the front that can either be moved back or off altogether? When you ask yourself these questions, if your answer is, "You know what, I absolutely love my life. There is nowhere else I'd rather be, "and there's nothing else I'd rather be doing." Then that's great, keep doing what
you're doing. But if your answer motivates you to make a change, remember that just because you were born somewhere, it doesn't mean you have to stay there. There's an old saying that if you don't like where you are, MOVE. You're not a tree. Every off-ramp on the road, every bus stop, every train station, offers us new opportunities. And I get it, I know you're scared and you're thinking,
"But what if everything goes wrong?" But what if it doesn't? There's an adage that says, "The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it." So, replace your fear of the unknown with curiosity, and make the most out of this life, because it passes so quickly. By the time I got off the phone with this tech-support guy, not only was my computer fixed, but he was excited to talk to his wife about finally moving
and making some changes in their lives. So, as scary as the unknown may be, I think the mundane predictability can be even scarier. So, what are YOU waiting for? I want to thank you for making this podcast possible. I hope it makes you smile, and makes you think. Makes you loosen your grip on how you think life "should be," and explore how it CAN be. There's that song: "In a world full of people, only some want to fly, isn't that crazy?" I hope you spread your wings and fly, my friends. Namaste.
Timber Hawkeye is the bestselling author of Faithfully Religionless and Buddhist Boot Camp. For additional information, please visit BuddhistBootCamp.com, where you can order autographed books to support the Prison Library Project, watch Timber's inspiring TED Talk, and join our monthly mailing list. We hope you have enjoyed this episode, and invite you to subscribe for more thought-provoking discussions. Thank you for being a Soldier of Peace in the Army of Love. 🙏