What is consciousness? Well, the web’s favorite (and most abused) free encyclopedia Wikipedia defines it as “… a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one’s environment.”

As I look over that definition I sit back and think to myself, “I’m in favor of all of those things.” Too often I have experienced myself or have observed others mindlessly traveling through life, ruled by our routines and numbed by what might seem like an endless amount of monotony. Have you ever just stepped back, away from a particular moment and asked yourself “What am I doing here?!?” or “Why am I doing this?!?” Well this blogger has and he thinks that it’s time to start living life in a more purposeful and conscious manner. I believe in some ways that the movie The Matrix touched on this idea that if we aren’t careful we can fall into a trap of comfortable conformity to our lives without giving our surroundings a second thought. Where is the subjectivity or self-awareness in your life. In what aspect of that life do you find your identity? In what aspect of that life do you enrich your conscious mind?

The challenge that I pose to myself and to all others around me for 2007 is to look for more opportunities of awareness in our lives and to get our minds off of auto-pilot. Life is too short and too rich with possibilities to allow ourselves to continue the mindless march toward a thoughtless oblivion. Let’s take back the days, hours, minutes and seconds of our lives and in a peaceful act of protest demonstrate an ability to actively use the minds that we’ve been given.

Oh, and welcome to my blog.