While I was trying to find a photograph for the next text, I stumbled upon some old photographs, some of which dated back to my student days.
Those days were golden. I had the luck to study something that opened many possibilities to me – to travel, to see new places, to gain new skills, to feel the nature in its full wilderness. We were walking through the woods during the heaviest of rains, diving during winters and cold northern winds. But we also woke up with the first rays of the sun, and dived in the most beautiful shades of blue, among surreal marine creatures. We stood on the top of the cliff and witnessed the quiet beauty of this world. We watched the night skies with billions of stars, with no lights around us, just those stars and the sea. Nothing more, nothing less.
Those were the moments when I knew I fell in love with it. With this world, with its treasures, far from our cities, far from everything we touched with the wish to change it for our own sake.
You might find your purpose and joy in a million different things.
You may find it in helping others, in teaching, in inventing or repairing things, in making art. Some jobs may be of extreme importance to society. Some other jobs, like making and performing art, may not be of practical importance, but they have extraordinary power in making our lives beautiful. For me, that makes them an irreplaceable and essential part of human lives.
Some jobs, like being a biologist, being involved in conservational and environmental issues, seem unimportant for society, and are often underrated because of that. But you already know that we cannot live without nature and its goods. We are connected to it whether we want to admit it or not. Those jobs are strongly connected to the well-being of us, people, although we might not see it.
To me, one of the most inspiring things is to meet people who respect other parts of life than the one that they are strictly involved in.
You don’t have to be a professional musician to fully enjoy classical concerts. You don’t have to be musically educated to try and learn some dance moves. You don’t have to study economics to show interest and gain some basic knowledge about finance management. And you can study and work in whichever field you find interesting, you can be a lawyer, a secretary, a painter or an electrician, but you can still feel gratitude and respect towards our environment, and act accordingly.
Our jobs do not define us. When we choose what we want to do in our lives, we do not exclude everything else – or at least we shouldn’t.
Stay open. Stay curious. The world is too vast for you to close in your niche.
Our nature gives us so much, and we take way too much – yet we experience so little.
I dare you to find the beauty in it. Calmness instead of anxiety in a cold rain, thrill instead of fear on wild waters, serenity instead of tiredness in summer dawns.
Once you find it, once you see the beauty of our world, it will become like art, music, your favourite song – it will have extraordinary power in making your life beautiful.
And I wish that in the future, it will still be possible to go somewhere where we still won’t have set our foot, to watch the night skies with billions of stars, with no lights around us, just those stars and the sea. Nothing more, nothing less.