Claud

An avid collector of your hopes and worries, a romantic at heart.

She thanks her fairies, for blessing her with people who know compassion down to an art.

For accepting her for who she is, who never fails to turn up,

in times of need as well as happiness, or just there for a loving hug.

These days, the idea of "jobs" keep popping into my mind. It started out with a news article, and then sharing that article with my students since they are about to take their A'levels, my friends' comments about their work, and lastly, Shang's blog about people changing jobs time and time again.

It sparked a memory about what a teaching assistant once said during tutorial, with regards to global cities, is that our generation simply have too much choices and because of that, change is rampant and never-ending. I can almost hear Nigel Thrift laugh because he said, we're forever in the process of becoming, where there is no Capital Letters to start the sentence, and no full stop to end it.

Because we have choices, "better jobs" with "better opportunities", people move - from job to job, from country to country. It's the need to search for something better, and some psychologists argue because there are so many choices, what we choose will never be satisfactory because we know there'll always be something 'better' out there. So the never-ending pursuit for that 'something better' makes us unsatisfied with what they have.

With that, we hear increasingly amounts of commentary on how we must live life to the fullest, sit contradictorily with 'be satisfied with what you have'. It's almost like there are twin forces pulling us apart - which to believe, which trajectory should we adopt?

At times, I also sit in the paradoxical position of being satisfied with what you have and being uneasy about it. Or going out there to pursue all your goals until you reach a point where you just slag because of fatigue. Some would argue that it's about balance. However that is also in itself very paradoxical, we cannot do both at the same time - be satisfied with your state of being, and at the same time pursue all other alternatives. I believe this is why we have increasing inequality amongst our society. People who drive and strive to excel in any possible way they could because they believe life is too short, and people who sit back and take in the roses because they believe life is too short to be 'too busy' to enjoy.

So do we sit and smell the roses but risk being stagnant, or run forward with the wind to capture what may not even be there?

I think most of society is still very bothered about the idea of progress - that it is a linear upgrading process. Progress is thought of something better than yourself. So that's why when we have choices, we move to pick what is better for us. It's all about wanting something progressive and 'better'. I am personally that sort of person who believe that we must end up with something better than you start out with. Yet recently I'm starting to doubt if the pursuit of progress has ended up with a vicious cycle of never ending and in that sense, I'll never transcend this want for progress.

Is there something else we can want besides "being better"?

Since progress can sometimes overwhelm us, make us prisoners of our own desires, influences us to desire something for it's own sake - life loses meaning.

So instead, we search for meaning. But what meaning? Some find it in God, some find it in helping others, I find writing papers on society meaningful. To (mis)quote Marx, "(from) to each according to his [sic] own ability, to each according to his [sic] need". Although the context of this is entirely different from what we're discussing here, but I love his eloquent writings, that I can't resist to borrow. Essentially, we have to find meaning in our own ways, and find progress in that, to love what we're doing, we would want pleasure and satisfaction in what we do. Therefore, to derive more pleasure and satisfaction, we do more of it, and inevitably we get better at doing it.

Therefore, it's not so much as having a dream - if you don't, and you're satisfied, then perhaps you're the happiest person on earth. It's more of doing what you want, or more accurately, what you think you want at this moment with this set of circumstances. People are fickle and they change, and yet they can also be absolutely endearing and steadfast. It's all about HAVING choices, unfortunately, not many people have the luxury of even possessing choices. For those who do, we take them for granted.

Essentially, the search for meaning need not be out there, it might be looking right back at you. The solution for 'living life to the fullest' and 'sitting back and relax', is really about finding what you want, and just pursuing it. Ultimately, people change, and those who sit back may decide later in life to run, and those who have been running may want to retire back to their homes. We don't need an approval stamp for our actions, you only need to answer to yourself. Such matters don't appear evident to us because we are not aware about the impact of our choices until we look in retrospection maybe 20 years from now, and realise what sort of trajectory we've taken.

Therefore meaning =/= dreams =/= progress =/= success. We tend to blur all 4 and it's time we examine them in isolation from each other and ask ourselves. What do we really want?


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Post script:


Steve Jobs passed today, it's a pretty sad loss. Ultimately, it's about his genius that I really miss. Despite his brilliance, let his, or in fact any death remind us how to live.