Life is essentially a constant search for happiness. My personal meaning of life is to learn as much as I can, be as happy as I can, and try my best to help as many other people to be as happy as they can. What makes each person happy is different, of course. Perhaps a secure and quiet life in the suburbs, a steady job and income, a nice house and car, a white picket fence with 2.05 kids - the average American family - may make some people happy. Maybe that was their dream and they've achieved all they wanted to achieve in life? I personally can't understand how this can be a dream since we have such a short time to live, but if that is how they find their personal happiness, I have absolutely nothing against them. The people I do critique are those who are too lazy or too scared to take a chance in life, those people who settle for a life they don't sincerely wish for, such people in my eyes will always be poltroons.
Shockingly, my backup plans in life seem to make me reflect on my personal life goals. As of now, my future is completely uncertain. Someone mentioned that I have my entire life planned out: my list of things to do before I die, what my "retirement" plans are should I live to be too old to travel, and that really made me think. While it is true that I have a sketch of my future, or at least, what I want my future to look like, the sketch is all in pencil. Years pass and my life portrait becomes more and more complete. Perhaps most of the background is already painted and finished. Details and other finer points are unfinished and not even dreamed of yet, but I merely have guidelines, not specific, mature goals. Becoming a travel writer is my dream job, but working solely as a travel writer is actually a difficult dream to attain since the way I travel is appreciated by few, if any, publishing companies. No one wants to endorse hitchhiking, sleeping outside, or accepting housing from strangers you meet along the way. Most prefer hotel or youth hostel reviews, perhaps reviews of restaurants, cruise vacation reviews, and other such boring modes of travel I deem should be reserved for the elderly. What I want to write about are alternative, unconventional ways of traveling, in addition to the sites and attractions, in addition to the history of the country, city, language, culture, the people... How I plan about achieving my dream is still in progress.
Then I realized, my rather, very recent "backup" plan I've been toying with was becoming a professor. This would provide some basic income in addition to spare time during breaks, allowing for me to travel. Yet, I wonder, is this a reactionary development of cowardly adulthood? Intellectual stimulation is something I really enjoy, I admit it, I enjoy learning. I'm very passionate about what I want to study and should I go on to complete a PhD, I already know what I want to research. Though I enjoy it, becoming a professor would be "settling" and I refuse to settle. There's an anonymous quote that goes, "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." If I were to become a professor, would I really be living each of my days teaching as if it were my last? Probably not.
To be good at something, I realize you really have to love it passionately. In high school, I loved my history classes, despite going through my surgeon phase, which led me to take many science and anatomy classes. It made me realize I couldn't be a surgeon when I didn't feel any passion for most sciences. How could I force myself to study subjects I didn't like through 4 years of university then again through 4 years of medical school? Would I be happy? I gave up that dream, luckily, by the end of high school. I'd moved onto another phase by then; my "artsy" phase. Bohemian lifestyles were romantic and attractive to me so I concluded I would become an artist/pianist, even if it meant I would be starving and poor for most of my life. Then I realized while I really enjoyed piano and painting/drawing/sculpting, etc., I would never be good enough to make such things my profession. Moreover, while I "loved" doing what I did, I was never exactly "passionate" about it and never felt that feeling of inner satisfaction with anything I finished painting/drawing/sculpting or after piano recitals. At university, I finally found my passions: traveling and foreign languages. Problem is, how to combine these two passions into a job I will love? Travel writing is a dream job, but that's not necessarily the only job that I could love.
As long as I find any job that allows me to travel, learn and use languages, and perhaps in the process, help others, that would be a job I'd love. I do feel lucky to have found my passions in life so early on and realized the importance of following your dreams. Despite how cliché it sounds, it's true: you have to follow your dreams. Don't listen to what "logic" says, listen carefully to your innermost desires. Find your life passion or passions and do something you feel such a passion for. An average human spends about 1/3 of his or her life working, 1/3 of his or her life sleeping, and 1/3 of his or her life doing something else. Why not make sure that the 2/3 of your conscious life is spent doing something you love? I believe I will only live once. This is my one and only chance at living and I think it would be foolish to be anything but happy during the 2/3 of my life I'm awake. If you love what you do, you'll excel at what you do. I refuse to settle for less and I advise everyone who is reading this to do the same. Never settle for less. Never settle for something you're not 100% happy and satisfied with. If you haven't found your passions yet, keep looking until you've found it. When you do find it, you will know. The realization will be so profound that you can't miss it.
Generally, I'm a happy person because I count all of my blessings. I'm happy to have found my passions early on when there are some people who spend their entire lives looking and dying before finding theirs. I'm happy because I realized that we are all dying early on in life. You, dear reader, will die soon. I will die soon. We are all on the same boat headed towards the sea of death. We are all fellow passengers. What will we do during this journey? Thinking about the inevitable fact of death will help you make the choices in life because when you think of the possibility of dying tomorrow, everything else will seem like frivolities. Your fears of failure, your fears of embarrassment, any great expectations that others have for you, your fears of what others will think or critique about your actions, they're all useless when you know that you might die tonight. Live life as if you were dying, because you really are. Only then will you realize what the most important things in your life are. There's really no need to fear life or death or failure since, in this universe, in this world of many galaxies and solar systems, you are a pretty insignificant life. Your mistakes or embarrassments will go unnoticed by most and so you have this one chance at life - this blip in time in all space and time continuum before and after your conscious existence - to do what you want to do, to try to make a difference by making others happy, and to make yourself happy.
Today's Random Picture:
