“Chill”
I read the above post from Garance Doré first thing this
morning and I started thinking: what are my goals and wishes? My real goals? The
ones which achieving them would make me really happy? By happy I mean really
joyful not just accomplished or relieved. Yes, there is a difference… for an overachiever
people-pleasing person who I am, there is a big difference. In my mind there
are a few different lists: one is for goals which I have to achieve in order to
prove to others that I am good and lovable (yeah, issues! I know!)… Then there
is this other list of goals I have to achieve because I think they are worth
the effort, or because I want them (?!! I mean maybe I want them, gets
confusing sometimes!) and because I think these achievements are making me a
better person, improving my life or my mind or my social status, so they are
goals I have to achieve because they make my life better but I don’t love them necessarily
(like having a job because you have to earn money to live but it’s a job you
don’t love and doesn’t make you happy. You know what I mean?). Then there is
this third list of thing that makes me really happy. Problem is this list is
not very well defined. I’m not always sure what is on it.
It is sad that I am not the only person feeling this way. When
talking to a friend few months back, she mentioned feeling like a wormy apple,
perfect from the outside but destroyed on the inside. What affected me deeply
about her description was how perfectly she captured her life without having an
ounce of poetry in her. Considering she is beautiful and healthy, has a high IQ
and a PhD in a complex branch of engineering, is a professor and researcher with
a lot of publications, have a loving husband and supporting family, is financially
secure and professionally respected, and so on. It was sad how apt was her
description and how deep it resonated with me.
Today reading Garance’s post, I was apprehensive: Am I focusing
too much on what is expected from me socially and not enough on what makes me
really happy? Am I confusing the sources of my happiness? What are my real
goals? Isn’t to be happy? Will what I am doing and pursuing make me really happy
upon achieving it? Or would it be only another item checked from the lists of
things I had to do… which brings more relief than happiness… and I have learned
time and again, relief is not happiness. Relief doesn’t last.
