The world according to 23-year olds

If one reads the autoethnographic posts here from the time I began blogging, which was back in 2001 ... ok, you can't--I deleted them all in one stroke in 2007.  I then took a break, and restarted the blog in 2008. 

If one reads my autoethnographic posts since 2008, there is a good chance that a thoughtful reader can put together a composite picture of who I am and what I value most and what I couldn't care for. 

Ever since my young adult years, I have been consciously making decisions in order to lead a life that makes meaning to me.  Meaning that cannot be measured in material terms. A different perspective might lead one to conclude that I had no drive and that I failed to live up to my potential.  But, this blog itself is more than evidence that I am trying as much as I can to follow that old sage's advice to lead a life that is examined, even if it meant a life in exile.

The sun finally set and ended my mediocre career.  Mediocre by conventional measures, that is.  I have been largely at peace with that because I have never intentionally and mindfully worked on "advancing" in a career anyway.  A career does not make a person.  It is irrelevant to who the human is.  Irrelevant to who I am.

Sooner or later, most--if not all--of us realize that a successful career is not by itself the source of happiness.  Happiness is one of those strange things that comes from within.  A blue sky with puffy white clouds makes us happy.  A good time with friends makes us happy.  What the hell has a career got to do with all these, and how do you put a price tag on these, right?

So, how might one figure out what they want out of life in ways that will make them happy?

Simple enough at face value, “What do I enjoy about life?” is a deceptively difficult question. Since no one enters this world as a fully realized human, this takes some trial and error. Coffman says to consider what naturally excites you and to feed those desires. “If you lived on an island and there was nobody around to people-please or to impress, what is it that you would want in your life?” she says. “What is it that you would be doing? What are your natural passions and skills? What excites you naturally?”

Because I had internalized this, thankfully, right from when I was young, I have a tough time imagining why others do not constantly engage in such thinking.

This work is difficult and, frankly, terrifying. Few people would willingly embark on a thought exercise that puts their entire life into question. However, consider the alternative: coasting along in a career or relationship you don’t quite feel passionate about because you never considered other possibilities. At any age, setting aside time and intentionality to decipher what motivates you and whether you’ve been living authentically can be enlightening. This isn’t to say a life full of “traditional” markers of success and happiness isn’t worthwhile, but some contemplation can determine if these milestones are desirable for you.

What we do for a living seems to serve as an identity mark, as much as the moles on my lower forearms are.  (Oddly, I have nearly identical placements of a mole each in my right and left arms!)  To most people, the work that they do is both a critically important part of their identity and also one of the most unpleasant parts of their lives.  To shove that job aside is, I suppose, nothing especially American but a universal story.

I lived that unpleasant life, more than once.

Even before getting into the engineering program, I knew that I wouldn't enjoy it.  Four years in the program certainly confirmed that. Working in India upon graduation erased even the tiniest doubts I might have had.  I hated waking up in the morning and heading to work.  I barely survived ten weeks in my first job, and then it was quite a few months before I took up my second one, in which I didn't last even a month. 

For a few months in mid-1986, I might have come across to people as one of those young men who was nothing but a loser who was wasting his time and his parents' money. I did not care about what others thought. Those were the precious months when I was rapidly zooming into what I wanted to study in graduate school, and the universities that might offer such programs.

At my uncle's insistence, I took up another job in which I served the longest--six months!  Finally, as a 23-year old, I was off to the US for graduate schooling.

But, it was not a case of happily ever after.  Not yet.

The "work" after graduate school was not one that I had planned on, and I certainly felt ill at ease there, while it certainly paid immensely more than what I eventually earned as a university professor.  It took another six years to gain a foothold in academia.

But, how would I get all these across to 23-year olds trying to figure out what they want out of life?

Will 23-year olds understand what Bill Watterson said in a much simpler language?

[Having] an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another. 

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. 

You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them. 

To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.