Good year,

It is the first day of 2008 and by no means is this a contrived attempt at reorganising my life because it is the done thing in western culture at new year’s. It is quite simply coincidence that this holiday of traditional reflection and vows to self improvement falls on a period of reinvention for me.

It had been a long time (few weeks) coming after having various catalysts enter my life. The movie Into The Wild was a key player in allowing my head to visit another level of existence, or another way of life, to be clichéd.

I have been aware of these different levels of existence in which people live. Most people stay in the one plane. I like to call them levels of law. Some examples are:

• laws of physics
• laws of nature
• laws of society
• legal law
• laws of morality

Most sets of law inherit the laws above them and use them as a base for their own rules and standards. The order can be somewhat blurry, as morality can rely on legal law, and legal law strongly draws on morality.

I see most people in my culture fitting into this ladder around the legal law level. Most citizens abide by the law for the most part and will go above the law on occasion.

For example: A person is driving home from work and exceeds the speed limit and cuts someone off by undertaking them in the slow lane. They put themselves above the law and above morality, displaying lack of regard for other drivers, but exist in the level of society as they work a day job, are driving home from work and probably think it is the only way to live their life in a pursuit of happiness.

Into The Wild is a welcome holiday above the laws of society. The main character seemed to have longed to live above the laws of society, existing in parallel with nature. To see someone likeminded live out their curiosity with another way of life was something else.

Since visiting this perspective I’ve been very questioning about the way we live our lives, and for the first time have wanted to scream at everyone to wake up to themselves. For most people, this is probably impossible. Some people might have the capability to do this, but would be so deeply entrenched in their world of paying their next mortgage repayment and talking about who will be next to go in Australian Idol that they wouldn’t want to let go.

Perhaps I’m just scared that I’m one of these people.

Another catalyst was speaking to a lot of spiritual people recently. In a turn of irony, a business venture targeted at natural therapists and spiritual people has brought me closer to what they are into. At this stage I don’t know a great deal of what they practice or whether they are crazy, but I feel so much more comfortable in their presence than when I'm shoulder to shoulder with spenders at a billion dollar shopping centre who are frustrated and angry from trying to find a toy to please their loved ones for Christmas.

So the questions I face are: do I let go of what were my goals, which were designed to see me succeed in society? Would doing so make me happy, or would succeeding in the goals make me happy? Is happiness all that is important, or is there more? And is it even possible to let go of society? All my friends live there, after all.