I've had a long and what might be considered 'interesting' life. I have also through unintended circumstances been bestowed with the gift of time. All time is a gift, I know. The difference is, I have been relieved of the need to 'work' for a living in the sense of having to get up at a precise time each day, give over x amount of hours for pay and then return home mentally and/or physically exhausted to deal with whatever is going on there as well.

It is a blessing. I understand how fortunate I am. I appreciate this gift, despite the awful circumstances which brought it to being.

It allows me certain freedoms; like following through an idea to completion, no matter what the time of day and how long it requires. It also allows for contemplation, time to think, evaluate, question...

Everyone in my immediate family - sons aside, - my extended family through marriages etc., and my circle of friends are on a ladder. An infinite ladder, stretching far beyond the point where the eye can clearly see in either direction.

Some are on very high rungs. Endowed with privilege and wealth, afforded access to limitless possessions. Their lives envied by those below; those below working longer hours to climb higher... higher... aspiring to reach those hallowed upper rungs.

I've seen some fall too. Some a rung or two, a few right to their idea of bottom.Curiously, they begin the climb again. And again.

Their lives are spent looking at backsides; every backside looked at in turn, including their own. There's always someone above, no matter how many rungs they climb. There's also someone always below, despite the feeling at times that they have been catapulted to the very bottom. The ladder is infinite in either direction.

I got off. Came the point, walking barefoot along the shore one day, when I looked at footsteps left by others walking ahead and away from me, and I asked the question: Could life perhaps be linear instead? A long horizontal line, stretching infinitely in both directions?

I sat for hours on that shore thinking it through; because see, everything I'd believed, everything I'd held true, suddenly became nothing. I stared and stared at those footprints leading off in either direction.

Thoughts crowded; my mind simultaneously open to the new possibility yet also fighting it. If life was linear, then how and why had I wasted all those years on a ladder? What about everyone around me? Was every life climbing those rungs - expecting to arrive some place higher, better - never really fulfilled because those backsides on higher rungs were ever-present?

I compared the two. A ladder only ever allowed up and down movement. A horizontal line presented possibilities... one could meander to the side, follow a smaller path and then re-join the line further along... Like stopping for an ice-cream from a van at the parking lot - because you can - then resuming your walk.

This was either one of those 'light bulb' moments or I clearly had too much free time on my hands. I thought and thought. I chose the light bulb in the end.

Family members and friends are always striving for things, see. Better jobs, better pay, better homes, better cars, better gadgets... Newest everythings. I mean I live in the kind of environment where piercing my nose for my fortieth birthday was seen as yet another sign of my continued plummeting. Not a single piercing, tattoo, hair colour other than what they were born with - artificially enhanced of course once time introduced grey ones - and their attire always appropriate for each 'occasion'.

They work impossibly long hours; their children attend the best private schools and of course engage in all manner of extra-curricular'activities'. They are being coached, some already far up the ladder; their parents' lofty placement affording them the opportunity to leapfrog big chunks of rungs.

Those kids, in their designer clothes and their iPhones, groomed to within an inch of their young lives are destined to climb and climb and climb...

I am the 'odd' one now. You know the one you don't quite know what to do with? I care zilch for cars, fashion trends, upward mobility and 'fitting in'. I am the one they struggle to place at formal occasions and social gatherings because I refuse to bring the other. They are all paired see, and even if they're single temporarily, they still bring 'someone'.

They cannot talk with me. We share nothing in common. We speak a different language and despite the odd words exchanged, they're always accompanied by a distracted look, a subtle glimpse at their phones, a gaze extended beyond me to someone who speaks their language.

I cannot tell them of my newest promotion, my updated car, my favourite spa, my latest holiday or the 4k 80" TV I recently acquired. I cannot speak of this new designer I discovered or the $400 dollar face cream that guarantees wrinkle reduction... or the chic new restaurant everyone is talking about.

Things... things... things...

When I speak (rarely) of what is really occupying my thoughts, I face vacant stares; I see the glaze descend, I sense they hear but do not ever take in, much less engage. These conversations necessarily cut short, and usually by me.

There is a feeling of aloneness, walking horizontally when the rest are climbing vertically. Loneliness surfaces at times too, the need to speak my language with another who speaks the same. Times since, I've often followed those footprints in the sand, wanting to find whoever left them, thinking perhaps they might also live linearly...

Since I stepped off the ladder and freed myself of the need to gather, amass, judge worth by dollars in the bank; since I chose this horizontal walking, I've meandered off into some amazing side-paths. Perhaps I spend more time off the line than on it these days, but that's where I find the beauty, the wonder, the fascination, the creativity... Those side-paths do not bring me things; they fill my mind with endless possibilities to ponder on and meander through.

Seen from a distance, the ladder is an infinite stretch of backsides. I can view it as though a game; watching the constant vertical mobility, the climbing, the falling, the climbing, the falling; the envy of those below, the fear of those above. The smug grins accompanying every newly attained rung, the dismay and trepidation visible when one is overtaken or forced to descend temporarily...

Once in a while, I see someone giving up, walking away. I wonder then if this is the result of losing all hope, withdrawing into the oblivion of depression.

Or if perhaps like me, they realised the ladder is a vertical greed and need obsession, presented as the only ideal by those who benefit from its creation and its continued consumption-driven existence...