Live unconventionally so that you die having lived.

What do I mean?

There's a joke in our family: "She's off to Europe to find herself." It's a 'thing' here. A gap year between the years of schooling stretching behind, and the years of Tertiary 'studies' stretching ahead.

Off they all go. Some to Europe, others to Asia, others still, on various 'volunteer missions' to this starving nation or that under-developed one. Hoping to 'find' some meaning to this thing called self. Not realising there's not only nothing to find but also... that they're perpetuating a cycle of living which guarantees failure to 'arrive' anywhere.

Listen: You have already found yourself. When you exited your mother, it was YOU. No one else. Wasn't some shadow needing to spend the rest of its life seeking a skin and some bones; it was you, complete.

And YOU are caught in a perpetual state of 'getting ready for' or 'searching for' or 'finding...' or "living each day as it comes". Understand this:  It is death coming at you each day you hover, wondering who you are or how to find yourself- not life.

It's not your fault. Your parents did it, their parents did it, the entire human history depended on everyone doing just this: Moving life forward. Sacrificing their lives so that this constancy is maintained.

Oh but! Those who manage to escape! To throw off the shackles and LIVE- not to progress humanity or societal expectations or any particular cause-celebre... or to get mired in "woe is me" but to live their life as fully and as broadly as possible!

I may have mentioned Boyd to you in the past. He lived with us for a year down at the coast, when he was 16 or thereabouts. Then he left. Now, he is back with us, moved into the spare room with his girlfriend, Molly.

Yesterday, a Sunday Morning and the first day with full sun and some meagre warmth, we sat on one of the back porches on my brother's hand-me-down outdoor setting and enjoyed glasses of "Iced chocolate chilli tea", something I'd bought on our most recent supermarket spree and which Boyd and Dylan decided was befitting the day outside.

"Mum, come sit with us. I made you a glass too."

So I emerged and I sat. In my pink robe, hands splattered with white paint from my new bout of repurposing my few 'period pieces' of furniture to suit the new much larger bedoom, a beanie on my head since my room is the last to be reached by the central heating unit in this new home and thus... always on the chilly side- and an organic tobacco mix I'd discovered the day before at a tobacconist.

I knew this was to be no social breakfast gathering. I knew what Dylan wanted from me. And what Boyd needed.

"Boyd..."

"Yeah?" This, head down, fidgeting with one of his now almost at waist-level dreadlocks. He had a fair idea of what was coming, too.

"Why are you broke four days after your last pay? Why did you come to me before and ask to borrow some money till Tuesday?"

"I dunno."

"How much do you make a week?" (He's currently a third-year apprentice mechanic.)

"Six hundred and fifty dollars."

Dylan's jaw dropped. (He gets $260 a fortnight, as an allowance from the Government to help with his studies.)

"That's two thousand six hundred a month. You are nineteen. You have earned... maybe sixty thousand dollars in your three-year apprenticeship? But today, you are broke."

"And in a lot of debt," Molly added.

"How much do you owe?"

"My car... there's about $12,000 left to pay... then my stupid Cash Converters Loan, there's a few hundred left, and my $400 phone bill because I had no internet and had to keep topping up on my phone the past few weeks-"

"And your speeding and road-toll fines?" Molly again interjected.

"About $5,000 left to pay on those."

"And losing your licence for three months and the $600 fine?" Dyls added. (Why he was staying with us. He's lost his licence for 3 months and it is easier to get to his work from our place, using public transport- plus... he and Molly were homeless and had been couch-surfing for a couple of months, unbeknownst to me.)

"So you've earned 60k yet you are almost 20k in debt. At nineteen."

"Ye."

"And you have NO idea how you got here."

"Nope."

"Remember your dreams down on the Peninsula? About saving, and buying a home and investing and traveling-"

"I said that?"

"You did, many times," Dyls answered for me.

"I got no dreams. I just live day to day."

"Then you are not living. Death is happening to you."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you are like a plane in a holding pattern overhead. You may have enough fuel to eventually land safely... or you may crash. Right now you are very low on fuel. Keep doing what you're doing and the crash WILL come, Boyd."

"What do I do then?"

"Tell him about the 10% account, mum." This, from Dylan who'd read The Richest Man In Babylon some months back and now had several hundred dollars in his 'forget it exists' savings account.

"I will. But first, Boyd, here's what I want you to do: Next payday, leave enough money in your account for any regular deductions. Then: Withdraw what's left and keep it in your wallet. I want you to physically hand money over every time you have to buy something. I want you to think, of how hard you worked for that fifty in your hand- and whether what you are about to spend it on is worth the effort it needed to earn it."

"No more tapping?"

"It's partly why you are in this mess! Tapping for this and that- you don't see it as spending your hard-earned dollars. You don't associate the card-tapping with money."

"True. I only know I have no money left when it says "insufficient funds" and then I have no idea where it all went."

"Right. Now you will know, every time you open your wallet, exactly how much money you have left... and how long till the next payday. You can then budget accordingly."

"Makes sense. I never thought of it that way."

"You have been lured with convenience and speed, and you are being fleeced of your money. Understand, there's always a trade-off. It might take a little longer to open your wallet and count out notes or coins, but you are fully aware of exactly where every dollar is going, this way!"

"Okay. I'll do that, I promise."

"Before you do that, I want you to open an account without a card attached. One where you gain a better interest rate if you deposit regularly and don't make withdrawals. Then, I want you to take sixty-five dollars - that's 10% - from your next pay and transfer it to that account. Set it up so that it is taken out automatically each week before you can access your money. Then forget about the account. It doesn't exist- it only exists when you have to adjust the weekly payment because your pay increased or you got some birthday money or any other extra income."

"Huh?"

"Pretend you don't have it." Dyls took over. "If you run out of money in your wallet, you've run out of money. You don't have that other account. It works! I have $450 in mine. I mean I don't have!" He laughed. I laughed. Moly and Boyd stared.

"It's your 'whatever' stash Boyd. It can one day be whatever you wish it to be. A house deposit... a backpacking around the world adventure... welcoming a new life into the world... or after many years of work, a very sweet reward. What it can't be, is your safety net when you are broke or your 'saving for a rainy day'. It's fun money. It's reward money. It is to be spent one day for enjoyment- not to get you out of your shit in the present."

"That sounds cool."

"And another thing. Understand this simple truth: These are the best years of your life. Right now. It may well be, this time is as good as it gets. You are young, carefree (money aside) you have very few responsibilities and no dependents. Live as you do and when those things arrive... age, responsibilities, dependents... you may well look back on these years and sigh for them. You really wanna be sighing with nostalgia for this mess?"

"No?"

"Well lose the "I dunno," and the "I have no dreams or plans," and the "I just live day to day," mentality!"

I turned to Molly: "Molly, what do you have right now? Money aside, what do you have?"

"A roof over my head? A really nice boyfriend, umm... starting my course in two weeks... I'm kinda in a good place right now."

"Boyd?"

"Umm... I don't know how to answer that."

"You do know. You need to voice it."

"I can't think of anything. I have too many debts. I'm broke. It's just the way it is."

Molly punched him on the arm.

"You see what just happened? I asked Molly and she was positive, excited, grateful. I asked you and... I got grief! Lose it. Wake each day and be thankful for starters. You're alive. You're young- you can be anyone. Life is a funnel, Boyd. Very wide at the beginning but narrowing every day. Wait too long and your physical self may not be in tune with your mental self- way it is now. One day you'll wake up and be thirty- wondering where the last decade went. Kicking yourself because you've slid down that funnel called life and what was once possible has now become... a maybe at best? Live damn it! Live as though your life depends upon it. Because it does!"

"Okay mum, I think he gets the money thing." This from Dylan, seeing the early signs of yet another Life Lesson.

"I am living!"

"No, you are getting up five days a week to go to a place you hate and you put in eight hours there. Then, you come to wherever home is and you sit in front of your computer and play games- smoking weed the entire time. Weekends, you party hard. You use other, recreational drugs. These, to make the nights out seem better than they are. And to 'remove you' from the boring weekdays you see stretching behind you and ahead of you. Am I right?"

"I guess."

"And doing this over and over for how many years now- how's that working for you?"

"It's... not?"

"Then bloody change careers! Go study something which fires up your imagination, or go walkabout and learn through experience. Find something you are passionate about, something you love doing - no matter how insignificant to others - and then find a way to make a living out of that- only, enough though so that it doesn't ever come to feel like 'work' Be wary of greed!"

"I can't think of anything else I wanna do."

"So you are saying this is your life till you retire? You see no other possibilities or opportunities?"

"Yep."

"You're a lying ass!"

Dylan grinned. He knew what was coming next.

"No, I'm not! I don't think of stuff like that. It's true. I just take each day as it comes."

"Tell me, how did you end up here, living with us?"

"Errr... you'd mentioned you were thinking of moving and that there might be space for me... then... I saw you post about this house and the extra bedroom and... umm... I guess I figured because you are you, that I could ask?"

"So you recognised a potential opportunity and when it presented itself, you went for it. You considered the possibilities: Elise won't ask me to pay board to live there. I can maybe use this time to save some money and reduce my debts. Elise will also help Molly with her issues. Am I right?"

His head was bowed.

"Look at me, Boyd. Am I right?"

He looked up, not too happy. "Ye."

Dylan pulled back his elbows from the table.

"Don't fucking tell me you can't recognise opportunities or that you don't consider possibilities ever again. You don't hold a monopoly on a shitty home-life, we are all of us round this table damaged, one way or another. Get off your arse and live the life you deserve- not the life expected of you and your mates. Get out of the damn cycle! Break free of your parent's lives and their parent's lives. Lose the hopelessness! And get out of that bloody room! Take your girl and do stuff... and I don't mean going to the mall or getting smashed."

"He needed to hear that Elise," Molly said. "I've been telling him he needs to get out more and talk more and if he can't talk, maybe write things down?"

(That Cohen Hallelujah chorus played in my head. He'd at least got the girlfriend part right.)

"There's a gorge not far from here. I know you like gems... (They'd come back from the National Geographic shop with a rock that had to be smashed to reveal the gem inside the day before.) "Did you know you can fossick there for quartz and amethyst?"

"Really? I do like gems. I like the whole breaking a rock and looking at the crystals inside. How they formed, how they hide in rocks. That would be awesome!"

"Yep. Want me to take you there?"

"For sure!"

"And... here's the passion, finally. And the something that interests you!"

"Oh!" He laughed. We all laughed.

"Life Lessons over, kiddos. I have to go finish my room."

A few hours later, he knocked on my door. "Hey Elise, can I come to the beach with you and Dylan?" (Molly was out for the day, with a girlfriend.)

"Only if you leave your phone behind."

"Cool."

A few hours later, he knocked on my door again. It was 'family time', when the boys and I sat on my bed and either played card games, scrabble, or watched vids.

"Can I join you guys?"

"Don't see why you have to ask. You're family."

We spent the next hour or so laughing. Teasing each other and trying every which way to cheat without getting caught. Mostly we got caught- thus the laughter. I saw... for a moment here and there, the younger Boyd. The one with dreams. And the goofy grin I always found adorable and had sadly missed these past few years.

Dylan lingered after family time.

"He'll be okay, mum. I think today helped."

"It's sad babe. That I have to be the one, you know? Kids brought into the world and... it's not right, parents handicapping them from the very start. Limiting them. Belittling them. Then throwing them to the streets when they 'become too difficult'."

"I know, mum."

"But I don't think today helped much. You need to be open and he wasn't."

"We keep at it?"

"Ultimately, it is his life. We can only advise. It's up to him and right now- I am afraid he's gonna mum-zone me. See me as a meddling adult."

"But you're not!"

"But I am! I am assuming the role of 'mum' and so in his mind, I am NO different to any other adult giving unsolicited advice."

"No, you're wrong! He joined us, got out of his room. Some of your words must have got through, ye?"

"I hope so babe."

LIFE

Are you, too, in a holding pattern at a similar age? If so, consider this: Death is what is happening to you, not life. Think of that ever-narrowing funnel and how each day, melting into the next, pushes you further down... into incapacity, disability and diminishing opportunity.

Break out. Break free. LIVE; don't let whatever circumstances dominate/impact your living BE you. And don't bother wasting time trying to 'find' you or to reach some imagined ideal. Focus on this: These may well be the best days of your life- if so, look at them right now and consider whether you are, in fact, making them the best.

Fight to make each day full. Set up your own 'forget it exists' account. DREAM! Then dare to ride the dream, wherever it takes you. Screw societal and familial expectations or limitations. YOU can be anything right now. Choose to be the one living, not the one dying.