I was 22 years old, led on a beach in Fuengirola

I'd just finished university and I'd agreed to go and help a mate run his dads bar. 

I use the terms help and run both very loosely here and they are used more to describe the intent more than the reality. 

Anyway, I'm led on the beach and I'm bored because I'm not a beach layer or a hot country inner be'er if I'm honest. 

Boredom is great, it moves us to try new things in the absence of our usually go to stimulus. 

I think kids might be missing out on the gift of boredom these days although I don't know. 

My friend hands me a book as thick as my arm.

The lower arm but it's still pretty thick I think. 

For a book. 

The first book I've read in years, the first book that I wasn't forced to read or wouldn't make me better informed about the world of football. 

It was the Da Vinci code and I loved every adrenaline fuelled second of it. 

I let people since convince me that I shouldn't love it which is a demonstration of how influenceable the human mind is when it fears judgement. 

Our loves are only ever as secure as our definitions of why. That's the meaning behind the term guilty pleasure, a nonsense term really. 

A powerful lesson to learn that didn't involve the injuries that many do so I'll take it. 

It wasn't just the book of course, it was the euphoria of a completed degree, it was the excitement of living and working in a new country. It was the possibility of a new way of living, something I have always loved. 

It was my first journey into an adrenaline fuelled imaginary world experienceable while led on a beach relaxing. 

My first realisation that virtual reality was always at my disposal, first through books but eventually just through the stories I am free to create in my own mind.

My discovery of the fact that boredom doesn't exist and never did. 

Boredom is merely a sign that you have not yet discovered that the world exists inside your head. 

The external world is merely the physical manifestation of what's going on up there. 

Professor Langdon one of the da Vinci code hero's did for me what Harrison Ford had done 15 years earlier. 

Reminded me that life, even life and death life is not a series of problems, it's a series of puzzles. 

Solving them and how well you solve them is a product of how well you are choosing a life of problems that you are passionate enough about to acquire the knowledge to solve. 

And brave enough to start trying in the face of judgement and ridicule on the part of those who wish they had the courage to do the same. 

The life of someone who has chosen to be a puzzle solver is a challenging one.

Most don't want to solve puzzles.

Most want to deny the puzzle, 

Just press the button, 

Punch the clock. 

Those people are still asleep, 

They've not yet discovered,

Freedom is an inside job. 

Be a puzzle solver. 

The world doesn't need more sleep walkers. 

Ed Ley