“You can only know who you are, by first knowing over and over again, that what you’re not.”
What am I doing here in 2010 my search for meaning took off. Maybe even further back. I remember when I was 5 or 6 years old, I started asking my parents questions about Death. I couldn’t understand how we could spend all our lives growing, working, loving and than one day its all over, dead! Buried in the ground, never to return. How can you just go one with your days without knowing the answer to fundamental questions like whats the point in all of this. The lack of getting satisfying answers to the big questions about life set the stage at an early age, for the rest of my story.
So now I just turned 30. I had a decent paying Job as an accountmanger. A company car. I married my best friend and love of my life. She owned her own hairsalon. We had an active social life with great friends around. And we bought our first house together. This was the Ideal I had been aiming for since I dropped out of high school. There was no other motivation than having fun and being comfortable while doing it. The perfect picture I held in my Minds Eye was now a reality. I worked 40 hours a week, smoked joints to relax in the evenings and blew off some more steam during the weekends, partying with friends. The cycle repeats itself on mondays and to cope with that we took 2-3 weeks of vacation a year, cause thats the relief you need to keep you going for at least another 30 to 40 years. Nothing to unfamiliar for the average man, pretty standard I would say. Cause thats what we are supposed to do, right? Enjoy the fruits of your hard labour when you reach a respectable age 65/67. Hopefully with some energy left to do what you love fulltime.
I am not the only one, I’m pretty sure, we all thought of what would happen if we didn’t go back to work, after we had the best weekend of our life hanging, drinking and smoking with friends. Or to never returm home after spending 2 weeks at a tropical location, chilling in the sun with your sun tanned partner, being served and eating out all day long. Not to mention fantazising of doing something you exactly love doing all day long and make and living out of it. And what would our lifes look like if we could spend it only surrounded with people we actually love and want to be with. This compared to dragging yourself out of bed, to go through traffic, to a job you hate, to work with people you don’t like, while making money for somebody else. I wasn’t thinking this dark about my career all the time. My life was comfortable enough to be ok with it, but also to throw bigger ambitions out of the window. Smoking my joint the moment I arrived home after work, was all the peace offering I needed. Peace from a society that was as clueless as I was. But the advise was, keep going, keep consuming, as long as you are having fun!
Change arrived in the form of a crises an economical one, which became a personal one. So I was working with an employment agency and in times financial insecurtiy not a lot of businesses are not investing in the workforce. Still the motto at work remained we have to grow. For me as accounmanager that meant, Business got tough. So now a not to motivated sales rep, started to realize that you really had to love your job if you wanted to succeed in times of a crises. I wasn’t up for the challenge. I was working for a company I didn’t admire, with people I didn’t want to be like, doing work I didn’t love. So after many disappointing new business meetings, where nobody was waiting for me, I walked into Klara. Human resource manager with whom I had a business meeting with to see how there company was acting in these challenging times. My goal was to see if there still was a way in which company could be of any service. I believe I had only shook her hand when she looked me in the eyes and said, “You dont want to be here”. “You look unhappy”. Still playing my role, I told her I had a rough day. But she was wright offcourse I wasn’t able to hide it any longer. She told me I could drop the facade and be honest since these were her last days as the Human Resource manager and soon she would be leaving for Africa with her boyfriend. There she was going to help and educate local people on how to built their own farms. She was ready to leave Holland and wanted to do something of importance with her life. “You know what you should do”, she said. “Read Eckhart Tolle’s The New Earth, it speaks about people being lighthouses and showing others the way. And I am telling you now, to go and find yours”.
I listened, I started reading and never stopped. I read The New Earth and Tolle’s other book, The Power of Now. I continued with The Celestine Phropecy. And so I started researching the internet to learn about the Mayans and the coming of the ‘end of the world’ in 2012. I went to the darkside of the moon, reading about Conspiracies, Shadow Governments, Illuminati, New World Order, HAARP, Chemtrails, UFOs, Aliens, the coming of Niburu, our Secret History, Giants, the Annunaki, about the secrets of the Pyramids, more Ancient Artifacts and buildings. I came back around continuing the study on Spirituality with books about Buddha, Vipassana, the Tibetan book of Living and Dying, Krishnamurti, Drunvalo Melchizedek and the Flower of Life, a Course in Miracles and much, much more. Eventually I began practicing Meditation and some Yoga. My mind was opening up to different realities and possibilities, in the hope of finding some Peace of Mind in this confusing world we life in.
I went crazy, cause not long after my real talk with Klara I had exactly quit my job and now my fantasy about turning my back on society was going Live. Luckely my strong wife kept me with 2 feet on the ground. So even though I was quite confused on what to do with my life. I was totally lacking direction now, the road to Peace was far from been seen. I managed to produce just enough motivation, to keep looking for new possibilities that might gave me some satisfaction. Actually I just took what I could get, as long as I had not to much responsibilities. For a short time I did Telemarketing again, yes I went there! I worked as a Gardener, how lovely would that be. Working outside all day. It made me start my own vegetable garden with 2 of my best friends. It where 2 great months but we had no matching schedules so the fun of doing it together slipped away. Aswell working outside, doing all the heavy work in the burning sun. Colleagues with broken backs and knees, not for me. Then I started as a bike mechanic, cause through friends I picked up on a diy hobby. Stripping down old race bikes and turning them in to naked fixed gear bikes (no gears, no brakes). The ultimate kick was riding these death machines as fast as we could through town. An Rush of blood to the head, adrenaline makes you feel alive. With this came a plan. The mechanic job really was a tactical move to learn a new skill. By now I understood working for somebody you don’t want to be like wasn’t the answer. I wanted to inspire myself. The whole search for happiness had started with the assignment to find my own. So in my understanding that had to mean, starting my own business.
A Legacy was born. While still working for the Bike shop, I now had myself a nice side hustle, selling my own custom racebikes to hipsters looking for the latest trend. The options on how to personalize your unique minimalistic ride grew and from there I landed my first big assignment for a fashion brand. Skip one year, I was running shop in my wifes hairsalon in Amsterdam. They had an used basement which they wanted to turn in a concept store, so like that I became part of the Bubblekid Family. Its was a great new experience for me.
A place of inspiration, thats what my wife and her business partner had created with Bubblekid hairsalon. We had an work force of 8 totally different personalities united by the philosophy ” In creation we Trust”. In this place friendships were born and personalities shaped. Its was a welcoming place to all and we challenged our selves to make the world a better place. Amazing right?, a Hairsalon with a bigger vision than just cutting hairs and talking about the weather. This was a Space where people of all walks of live just came to relax, have a conversation or meet with friends. Imagine sitting around one long table with no mirrors, cheeky music playing through the speakers, a vibrant level of realness and connection with customers & eachother, I had never experienced in corporate world. How gratefull I was to be part of this.
Thank you.
SjG
Sebastiaan Joshua Gabriel 