Pursuit of Happiness.

 

“I see now that the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.”

-Mewtwo

Today, I woke up in a rather terrible mood. Not surprising considering it's a Sunday. I've been pretty vocal about my dislike of the weekends and any of you who have spoken to me recently would know it. Like most weekends, the cause of my displeasure was not knowing what to do for the rest of the day combined with the guilt of not doing anything 'productive'. Why do I feel guilty about not doing any work on my day off? I'm sure I am not the only one who has experienced this. Why is it that we feel the need to punish ourselves for not constantly thinking about how to improve ourselves? There is no satisfaction in whatever we do and it's a big problem. It's been drilled into us by how we've lived all our lives. 

Let's have a look at what we're told in school. It is the most important phase of our lives. We have to study hard and get into a good college and our life is settled. We can have all the fun we want after that. What a load of crap. We are convinced into thinking we must not be doing anything else other than studying. Watching TV is a distraction. Playing video games is a distraction. I am not gonna say I didn't watch TV at all but I felt guilty whenever I did watch it. If I used that time to study instead, it'd help me and it isn't a 'waste of time'. You hear these things on a daily basis only to be disappointed in the end no matter how much you score. There's always gonna be someone better. There's always gonna be someone who will score more than you. There's always gonna be a higher obstacle for you to cross. And you continue to work towards it rather than savouring whatever you did manage to achieve. 

Then you get into college. First couple of years are truly the best. You have no responsibilities and there's little to no expectations from you. You get to do whatever you want for the most part. You forge new friendships and it's all sunshine and rainbows. But you're still not fully free. You are thinking if only you had enough money to do everything you wanted. You have all the time in the world and all the energy in the world but you don't have the money to do everything you want to. All you need is a good job and your life is set. Two months into campus placements and your requirement changes from a good job to any job. 

You end up with a job which pays you decently and that should ideally be the end of your worries. You have the money to go wherever you want and eat whatever you want. Except, by this point you are a lot more health conscious and can't even eat a plate of Gobi without thinking it's unhealthy. You are physically and mentally exhausted by the end of every week and want to just rest on the weekends. Even if you have the energy to do stuff, you won't find people to do it with. It's not like college where you had a bunch of people with you constantly who were just as jobless. There's only so many things you can do alone and only so many times you can do it alone. 

And on top of that, you are then told that this is the time to be working hard and make as much money as possible so that you can have an early retirement and live like a King. This is the time when you will have the energy to work hard, so make use of it. This is the time you have to be working for 70 hours a week.

Give me a fucking break. 

There are some things which are more appealing at a certain age. You won't even have the interest to do all the things you wanted to do when you were young.  I am not as interested in video games as I was back in school but I couldn't play back in school. I wanted to eat outside much more in college but I no longer have that craving or the appetite. You have to do whatever you feel like doing at that given moment instead of thinking about doing it in a better stage of your life. I might not even live till my retirement to reap the benefits of it. I might get into an accident today and end up not having done anything 'fun' because I was working for a better tomorrow. There's got to be a point where you must be strong enough to decide you are happy with what you have. There will always be something more and something better. In the pursuit of greater things in life, we'll forget to appreciate the good things in life.