Do you ever question our purpose in life? On this planet? In the Grand Scheme of things? What is the real reason we are here on this Earth?

If you are religious, you believe that God created the Heavens and the Earth, and there is a ultimate deity whose omnipresence dictates our lives and purpose…

If you are not religious, you believe that at some point in the last few million years, we slowly evolved from single cell amoebas to apes, to our current human form, to which we spend all day running around with no true purpose other than to survive as the laws of nature dictate…

There are people who are comfortable just “existing” in this world. Willing to not question things because the answer may be too immense, too scary, or just plain old too difficult to comprehend…

Then there are those people on the opposite end of the spectrum. They question everything. They spend their lives in search of those answers. They create, they invent, they deduce, they theorize, they hypothesize… they are the people every one else depends on to answer the questions they are so afraid of asking… where would we be as a culture without those people…

Between those you find the rest of the population. The people who at times will consider a greater truth exists; a larger explanation might be possible; that there might be other answers out there but they don’t really “have” the time to find out. They are the people who are trying to find a purpose in life, to find a way to convince themselves their life has some meaning. They are the people who suddenly have an epiphany and then decide they want to do something great, to be a part of something spectacular… then the feelings wane and they go back to their lives…

I will never be a part of the first group, the ants in the ant farm… mindlessly trolling along, never really having a purpose for existing… being the rim-shot to the joke of procreation…

I dream of being part of the second group… to have a life and be a person whose existence altered the world… those Rhodes Scholar’s, (almost all of) the Nobel Prize winners, the innovators of industry… even those dot-comer’s whose simple idea sparked an entire generation’s shift in technology. Some may not know who the founder of Google is, but to realize these individuals not only created a 21 billion dollar company in under 12 years, but also actually created a new verb in the English language… THAT is cultural impact…

I accept that I exist in the third group… to live day by day, desire for more and accept less… I was recently told that the Navy wasn’t for me… on the surface that can be viewed many ways… but to know that person and their intent with the comment, it means so much more… its not so much that the Navy wasn’t for me, as it is that the Navy doesn’t fullfill me. One of my favorite movies of all time is Good Will Hunting. Once you get past the stars and the overbearing South Boston hoodlum perspective, you find the real moral to the story… the kid was a genius he just was never provoked… I’m not saying I am a genius, but I have waited almost 32 years to be mentally stimulated… I am sick of just getting by, I am sick of not being challenged, and I am sick of dealing with people whose incompetence is so overpowering, it actually limits me from getting my job done…

But what do you do? How do you change things? Where do you go from here? How do you walk away from something that is at the minimum, security? Do you take a leap into the unknown and hope you land on your feet? or do you end up being another example of the Inevitable Rise and Fall? When is the risk not worth the reward?