"What do You Want to do?"

It's such a simple question, but a surprisingly difficult question to answer. I suspect that some people spend their whole lives without being able to answer this question. I myself struggle to answer it with confidence, and am considering making some significant changes to help me find the answer.

It would probably help if I clarified what I mean by "what I want to do". You see, most people would answer that if they had the choice they would like to read, play video games, watch movies or series, watch sport or spend time with friends and family. But this isn't really the question I'm trying to answer.

A good way of re-framing the question to get to the answer I'm looking for is, if you won the lottery and could retire tomorrow, what would you want to do with you life? I suspect that few people would answer that they want to watch television, or read, or watch sport etc.

You see reading and watching television are forms of escapism. It's the modern equivalent of attending the gladatorial games; it's engaging, relatively relaxing, something to talk about and it helps to pass the time, but would you feel proud of a life spent watching the games?

In modern life, I think that this kind of recreation acts an escape valve in a lot of peoples lives. Besides, you have this do deal with:

• 24 hour day
• -10 mins Get the kids out of bed
• -15 mins pack a healthy lunch for work
• -20 mins Get the kids out of the house
• -15 mins Drop the kids off at school in time (stress!)
• -20 mins Try avoid the traffic and get to work on time (stress!)
• -9 hours  Put in a hard day's work
• manage and maintain intra-office relationships (stress!)
• -20 mins Navigate the unavoidable traffic (stress!)
• -15 mins Picking the kids up after school
• -40 mins Go shopping or go to gym
• -20 mins Groom
• -30 mins Make a nutritious supper
• -1 hour  Help the kids with homework
• -30 mins Meditate, or nurture the spiritual side of self (if you're an atheist, score! You just gained 30 minutes a day above your spiritual counterparts)
• -8 hours  Get a full 8-9 hours sleep
• < 2 hours Concious resting time (if you manage to avoid going to the loo and avoid any human interaction outside of work hours)

So when trying to fit all of this in, it's not surprising that when you do have a few minutes to yourself you want to do something that requires little to no effort, but that is satisfying and provides a brief few moments away from the vigour and relentlessness of modern life.

But then after spending your whole day doing what is required of you, have you really done anything that you really wanted to do?

In order for me to be okay with this existence, the only way I can see myself savouring each day of my life, is to find a job that I love. In other words, a job that I enjoy so much that I would do it, even if I didn't have to work; to live as if I had won the lottery and could now fill my days with anything I choose.

This does not mean that I plan professionally to become a beautiful sunbeam, but rather that I hope to find something to fill my days that I would do even if I won the lottery. I suspect that being a motivated, reasonably intelligent, and somewhat dashing person, it will be possible to convert my passion into an adequate living without being a burden on others... if only I could figure out that that special something might be.

I'm in the (ironically) privileged position at the moment of being unemployed, but with employment virtually guaranteed on the horizon, yet only in 2 months time. Given that I have exams to write during this time, and that I have to pack my life into 27kgs, this time will not be completely restful; however it's a better opportunity than most get to figure out what I want to do.

Introspection

I have a few suspicions about what I enjoy:

• I don't hate programming, which has been my profession up until recently, although I think I overstayed my passion in my previous job which has significantly tarnished my interest in software development. 
• I enjoy learning, although I don't particularly enjoy preparing for exams.  Although I don't have much of a track record with it, I suspect I may enjoy setting up educational material, which will put me in a good position to learn without having the pressure of having to put up with exams. I'll be on the other end of the exam if I choose to walk this dark path >D.
• I have always enjoyed learning new languages. This is something I have "done for fun" sporadically over the last 20 years that I find quite energising, motivating, and not entirely difficult; although there is only one language that I can claim any degree of mastery (and that's Afrikaans, although even then, it's probably only the first level of mastery). This hobby and pastime is something I've enjoyed for over 10 years, and as such I think it would be fair to say that I want to learn languages. I also believe that this can in fact be a livelihood, although I have no idea how much it pays to be a translator/interpreter.
• I enjoy wasting my time writing, when I have the time to do it. Plus it's cheaper than therapy ;).

Reflection

If you're living your life to retire, then I'm going to put it out there and say, you probably don't know what you want to do. Just be careful... when you reach retirement, you may be surprised to be left with a void that you have no idea how to fill. Even worse would be to believe that all that is left is the void. 

It's like having to choose a career when you've never worked; the only way to know if you enjoy something is to try it, and the sooner you start looking, the earlier you're likely to find it.

So... what do you want to do?

Positivity by Abstinence

It's been a while since I've posted in this forum, mostly because of some major changes going on in my life at the moment, and partially because I'm satisfying my blogging-itch by writing on a new blog (Blue Cranes Among Cherry Blossoms) which is related to some of these changes.

Anyway, the point of this blog is to sow the seeds of positive ideological change, and today I feel I have something constructive to share:

I think that sometimes the idea of charity can seem very daunting to people whose lives are spent trying to make ends meet. How can they give, when they can neither afford to spare money, nor time.

I'll give you a clue, how does a business increase it's profit margins? The answer is simple and 2 dimensional: Firstly the company can increase it's prices; in doing this, the profits will automatically be higher (although then you run some risks that are not really related to my illustration). Secondly the company can decrease it's costs.

So what I'm getting at is that our day-to-day experience is affected by others in two similarly obvious ways:

A positive change can be something as complicated as the contribution of a person who has dedicated their lives to teaching the underprivileged in the hope of helping them achieve their dreams, or it could be as simple as a sincere smile from a stranger, laughing at your own silliness, or talking and really listening to someone.

A negative change, on the other hand, can be sometime as overt as witnessing or being a participant in violence, but there are many other more subtle ways of spewing venom into society. Tell me whether any of these sound like something you've seen or done:

• Demonstrating anger at a shop attendant who is unable to satisfy  a customer, not out of negligence or incompetence, but because they do not have the authority to satisfy the customer's need.
• Hooting at someone for being a bad driver. While the hooter is great when attention needs to be drawn quickly, it was never intended as a sonic weapon of mass destruction. Hearing someone making a point that their fellow driver did something wrong at 5am by letting out a long drawn out honk, is really not fun when you're living and trying to sleep in the city. Similarly hanging on your hooter until someone moves at an impasse does little to make them move faster, yet it irritates the everyone around them, leaving everyone feeling worse off.
• Being apathetic, knowing that your actions could improve someone else's lot with no real cost to yourself, but not doing it out of apathy, laziness or as a demonstration of power.
• Shouting, swearing or cursing someone when they've made a mistake (because I think we need to be honest and admit that most times when people makes a mistake, it's not because they are trying to be a malevolent force in the universe.)
• Gossiping. At the risk of being called dogmatic, all gossiping is bad. Really. Gossiping is so destructive, and people don't even realise it. Today in my life, someone divulged that someone they named was sexually active and criticized them for trying to be a responsible person by seeing a medical professional. This dishonours the person while tainting the audience's perception of that person. So here there are two immediate negative effects with zero positive effects, and the audience is probably not going to mention it to the person being gossiped about because it would shame the gossiper and the gossipee, thereby robbing the gossipee of any opportunity to defend himself.
• For guys, whistling, or even simply looking at a woman in a way that causes her to feel unsafe.

None of these things are really acceptable, as in all cases the harmony of society is diminished, with little to no positive effect.

So my message for today is so simple. If you want to change the world for the better, then the easiest, easiest way to do it is to try to decrease the negative impact you have on society.

It's like decreasing your carbon footprint. Few people are actively trying to reverse the accumulation of carbon dioxide by planting trees to break down the molecule, but many people are trying to decrease the negative impact they're having on the ozone by producing less carbon.

Sometimes to be more positive, all you have to do is be less negative.

This week in the car, I allowed someone to cut in front of me. Yes, they were in the wrong lane, but there's a good change they didn't know it at the time. My patience allowed them to correct their mistake without having to manage the manoeuvre while also trying to outwit my attempts to block access to my lane. This meant that they could change into the correct lane safely. In addition to this, if I had gotten upset and gesticulated threateningly, then both of us would have been in worse emotional states.

I also felt a sense of pride at having been so mature, and felt a lot better than I would have had I allowed myself to let out my inner Hulk.

Try it today. And maybe tomorrow. And maybe the day after that. And maybe...