In the warm up to my holiday I have been trying my best to do stuff all work (Mike or Kieran - please ignore the previous statement). Instead I have been doing important things like penning submissions to Heckler (Sydney Morning Herald). Heckler is where you can write in for a rant on any subject you choose. I don't think they will print my one as it's too mean. Hey, maybe I was wrong about blogging being self indulgent...... Submission to Heckler: If one more person starts trying to tell me about their personal life journey, I will hit them. Hard. Sound a tad mad, aggressive and slightly off kilter? I am and I'm proud of it. The possession of a life journey is the new accessory to go along with the 'white dog in the handbag' and the 'mobile phone with annoying ring'. Some would suggest that it is a result of an increasing enlightenment of the group conscience and our reconnection as people with who we are versus the possessions that we have. I think that it is codswallop. It started with the HR guy at work asking me 'why I exist' as part of a group session on company strategy. He frowned when I answered "because I didn't have a choice". It then moved to a girl I was seeing who was going through a transitional phase of her personal journey. It looked very much to me like she was unemployed. My personal trainer then had a go suggesting that the reason that I didn't understand her life journey concepts such as 'there is no such thing as time', 'live only in the present', 'don't judge anyone' is that I was not evolved enough as a person and if I tried hard, I too would understand. It's actually not the personal journeys that bother me so much. I have a five year life plan. I have a will. I am a grown-up. And, if someone wants to spend their time banging on about how they plan to be nicer to animals and small children and stop judging the teller behind the counter at the bank, well, good on them. What really annoys me is how they react when you question their methods. So, if you don't judge people how can you ever be sure about who you like and who you don't? If you live in the present, how can you plan for the future? If you are nice to everyone all the time, how will you stop becoming a boring sod? The moment you start asking these questions you get the 'one day you too will understand', 'you're just not evolved enough'. That's where I start to get angry. When I was a kid one of my favourite stories was about the Emperor's New Clothes. For the uninitiated the story goes that some swindlers convince everyone that they have made the Emperor beautiful new clothes and that anyone who cannot see them is a fool. In fact, the Emperor is naked and it takes a small child to point it out. I loved this story because it demonstrated the power of a small voice of truth over a chorus of idiots. So, personal life journey freaks, I do understand. I am an intelligent, university educated, professional, high income earning, well-read, articulate person. Could I suggest to you that your smug, live in the present, unjudging theories are fundamentally flawed? Could it all possibly be codswallop serving only to make you feel like your life has purpose when it does not? Could the Emperor have no clothes on?