I woke up this morning with a mini panic attack: I’m about to turn 28 in three months, I’m single, and I have no freaking clue what I’m doing with my life.
I’m an analyst by trade. I spend ample time at work evaluating and writing about potential investment opportunities. I decided to adopt the same approach to my life outside of work. I figured if I cannot execute my ideas about life and things, then writing about them is another outlet.
There is an overarching sense of duty, that my life should be a certain way (go to school, get a job, pay off tuition, stay employed in order to fund my life) and it renders me incapable of following my heart (for the next couple of years).
I lived like this by default for many years now. This is a stage of stagnancy, in the absence of external stimulants that force you to think in a different way. We all enter this stage after graduating, landing a corporate job and going to work everyday.
When we grow older, we become less creative. We fall into routines, more responsibilities, we accept things as they are, we lack the mental capacity to think outside the box and do things in a different way.
Furthermore, a part of me is goal-driven and achievement-obsessed. I call this the dark side of me, as it keeps me constantly unsatisfied and motivates me to go after things. I recall a conversation I had with a psychotherapist, where she asked me to list the things I’m proud of. In that moment I was dumbstruck by the inability to come up with anything. I am the victim of hedonic adaptation and ever-shifting reference points.
But why are we obsessed with the illusion of being exceptional, as if being plain average is unacceptable? The sooner we let the idea go that we need to strive to excel, the happier we’ll become. This is the part of me that I call basic, where I get pleasure from just the simple things, like sleeping in, going for a walk, or cooking a good meal. There is so much emphasis in the society about excellence, success, high-performing and all that crap and when people are not ambitious and outstanding, they are made to feel inadequate. The concept that everybody is successful exists only in an utopian world where success is static rather than a relative measure.
I was in a long-term relationship with someone who I previously shared similar values with and breaking up was the quake to my world of beliefs. I’ve never experienced such profound freedom, to live the way I want to live. Previously I kept a tunnel vision focus without feeling the urge to question myself. A part of me is still practical, compared to when I was a kid dreaming about all sorts of things. The pain from crushing reality is what grounds you to the everyday life. In spirit of soul searching and finding ways to be happy again, I reverted back to being a kid. The more I read about people’s obscure ideas and stories, the more intrigued and connected I feel. When the dark side of me checks in to see what am I trying to accomplish here, I chose to not feed its hunger. The answer is simply nothing, and that’s okay sometimes.
Not everything can lead to a successful outcome, not every investment pays fruitful dividends. If our mind tricks us into believing we derive meaning and happiness from the result, then we need to consciously desensitize ourselves from the result, where we cultivate the most happiness from doing things just for the sake of enjoying it.
It is unlikely that I will drop everything and pack my suitcase for a RTW trip, nor will I become a person who makes rash decisions. I want to find a middle ground between the two polar opposites, in the same way the world is not black and white and there is a degree of complexity to everything. Nonetheless, at any point in life, it’s worthwhile to break out of our usual way of thinking and expand our perspectives to see what is it we are really chasing.
