A Drab and Unobstructed Life

 Just this morning, before writing this section, I had a very interesting thought regarding my personal motivation. One thing that is a source of potential, but also sadness, is the uncertainty that humans have to look forward to in life. If I don’t feel like I am working towards something, or that I will have to work hard to achieve a particular goal, it gives me a feeling of sadness, or perhaps emptiness.

I shall cite my own life as an example. Being raised by parents who have set the bar quite high for themselves, in terms of wealth, caliber of job, and family life, I feel as though even if I am able to accomplish these things, it won’t mean as much to me as it may have felt to my parents, having in a number of ways, having raised the bar set by their own parents to such an extent. Perhaps it is foolish of me to say this, but I sometimes feel as though the success and union of my parents has drained the purpose of my own life.

Let me try to explain why I feel this way. I feel that there is no aspect of a “successful life” that feels unobtainable to me. If I were to continue to be coddled and led onto a deterministic path of life, as I have been so far, what aspect of independence and uncertainty can I ascribe to myself. If I am being led on this path by my family for the purpose of increasing my family’s happiness, at the expense of my own true independence, I feel there is something greatly confining about my situation--little more to life that I can call my own--the novel struggles, the fear and excitement of undertaking risks, making the same foolish mistakes when buying my first home. I feel that I should indeed chase after such a life, and that this is something I will have to do without anyone guiding me, regardless of how pure or benevolent their intentions might be.

I have a quick story regarding my experience working towards a goal I regard as too easy. When I began college, there seemed nothing particularly hard about it.

I dream about a life where I can build myself up and get the experience of making myself who I am. I dream of moving out when I turn 18, with the measly amount of money that I have, getting a menial job to save up for the things I want: a humble car, a small apartment, a vacuum cleaner, the money for my tuition. I feel that I would value these hard-earned these things more than anything that is passed onto me.

Embracing these steps toward responsibility, and finally working myself up given my own skills. I emphasize that I long for such a life not out of any existential moral purpose, nor a deep-seated sense of guilt that the household into which I am born is privileged above others. The reason I do so is quite a selfish one, and that is to establish some sense of purpose and long-term goal that doesn’t feel out of my reach. Only in such a scenario do I feel that I would truly be able to shoot for the stars out of a personal desire for more. Staying in a life where I already have what others desire would beget complacency, and what scares me more about complacency than the fact that it is purely a bad habit is the fact that it would drain me out of the sense of purpose and independence that drives people to do great things.

At the same time, I feel that I would be remiss if I did not mention what I feel are the benefits of being guided by others, and led onto such a path. If I were born into poverty, as my dad was (though not extreme poverty), I feel that I would long for the guidance of someone already successful--an older brother who could teach me about the nature of his own journey, as well as his personal regrets. For example, I have had the chance of learning about the deep pitfalls of drug and alcohol addiction. I feel that such temptations have such debilitating effects that I would be driven to avoid them out of fear for their consequences, a learning that would have cost me significantly, had I taken the learning through self-experience.

The last thing that I wish to mention in this section is what I feel I can do in my own life to avoid the empty, complacent state of being that I dread. Envy has helped me overcome abject apathy towards my goals, in the past. Seeing someone I admire and take after achieve something that seems truly marvelous can evoke the ignition of a jealousy within my stomach that makes me want to mirror the things that led to their achievement.

In the 10th grade, I had a friend, quite humble, beside whom I used to sit in class. We had a mutual respect for each other, and I would often be praised by her for my superior test scores, and hear of her genuine jealousy of my grades (it did not push me apart from her, as it felt good to hear of her admiration of me, and in turn gave me more respect for her struggle to improve). Within the next few months, I learned several remarkable aspects and personal accomplishments about her (not in her presence) that inspired within me a similar feeling of jealousy--leading/starting multiple clubs, writing a paper, publishing a book, winning a science fair competition, and being accepted into a top university. This feeling of jealousy was perhaps exacerbated by the fact that I had underestimated her, and while I knew she had been aware of all of my successes and delighted in her admiration for me, I felt rather silly to find out that she, in her own right, had multiple successes, and had yet remained so humbly admiring of me while I had started to believe that I was as superior to her as she had made me feel (though, I can perhaps obviously only comment upon her character to the extent that I knew her, and interacted with her).