May 2, 2006
Knowing What You Want…
…and wanting what you’ve got.
That, in my humble opinion, is the key to happiness. If you make a mistake in the first part, getting what you seek won’t make you happy. If you make the mistake in the second, you spend too much time chasing the “next” step to enjoy the one you’re on.
Of course, it’s not that simple. The world is full of individuals, all of whom have wide-ranging goals. But we have a media and a social structure that tells people what they’re “supposed to” want. We see it every day, in the people who are simply unhappy with their lives. They don’t know what they want. They only know what the media says “everyone has” and “everyone wants”, and don’t want to be the last one on the block to get it. It’s a common issue these days. We’re so conditioned to think about comparing ourselves to our peer group, or to our coworkers, or even worse, to celebrities, that we don’t even understand what we really want. People need to take a moment to ask themselves what makes them happy, what they really want, and what they need to do to get it.
This, more than anything, was what made me leave Southern California. I realized that everyone there is involved in a race. Their race is to see who can have the biggest, the best, and the most ostentatious. For too many, internal happiness isn’t even important anymore, outward appearance is what counts. And that’s a race I didn’t want to participate in. Heck, I can’t criticise completely, some people there actually enjoy it. They derive happiness from showing their new BMW or Lexus to their neighbors, even if the payments are crippling. They want to be seen wearing the “right” clothes, shopping at the “right” stores, and being a part of the “right” crowd. But that’s not me, and I’d have to say that for most people, that’s a path straight to unhappiness. When you’re in a race, there’s always someone faster, someone stronger, someone richer.
If anything, I’ve learned who I am and what I want. I know what I value. I know what makes me happy. When the whole family came to visit the house for Easter, some of us were discussing what we wanted out of life. I’m now at the point that I’m right where I want to be (for now). That brings me to the second part of the equation: wanting what you’ve got. When I was in Southern California, I was unhappy with my life, because I knew that I wasn’t where I wanted to be. I realized that my life wasn’t on the path I wanted it to be on, and I had to move. I’ve passed that point now.
The road to happiness may include material things, it may include career goals, it may include relationship goals. All of those things interweave to make life flow. Material things are one of the most deceptive. Material desires aren’t to be shunned, but acquiring goods for the sake of acquiring is rarely a road to happiness (with the exception of collectors). Acquiring things to impress your neighbors is usually just another “race”. Careers can be another pitfall. Too many people desire to be in management because it adds prestige. It doesn’t matter that they’re miserable when managing instead of doing. Often, people chase advancement over fulfillment. Last, of course, relationships can be the most dangerous road. Some people enter abusive marriages simply because they can’t see themselves outside of one, or find themselves with emotionally-abusive friends because they’d rather have a bad friend than no friend. Some live their lives to please their parents or society, instead of choosing the relationships they want to be in.
I struggle with all of these aspects of life. I think I do well sometimes to avoid the material pitfalls. It’s not that I dislike material goods, but I try to get material goods that I want for my own sake, not for their ability to impress. For example, I used to own a motorcycle, but not because I wanted the motorcycle “image”, but simply because I enjoyed the thrill of riding it. Today, I’m resisting the urges of my wife to get a pool table for our basement. I know that basements are supposed to contain pool tables, but I don’t think I’ll play enough pool to enjoy it, and I want to make better use of the space. In my career, I was in a job where the main opportunity for advancement was in sales. Of course, there’s usually better money in sales, and more money would be nice. But I’m not a salesman. I’ve done a lot over the last few years to try to define a new role in my company, including the changes of moving across the country, to find a way to do what will make me happy, instead of what will bring the bacon but make me miserable. And I’m hoping to turn writing into an extra income stream (if I can figure out how), which might allow me to have the money and the fulfillment at the same time. And on the relationship front, I spent years in college around abusive friends. At the time, I didn’t have a lot of self-esteem, and I was willing to be friends with the wrong people rather than face life without those friends. Only through years of personal growth, and learning to surround myself with better people, have I learned how wrong I was to put myself in that situation.
Unhappiness is not the natural state of man, but we sure find ways to trap ourselves into it. There are a lot of chronically unhappy people out there, who simply have been duped into perpetually chasing a rabbit they don’t even want to catch. If anything, I want to be an Evangelical Individual, because people can only make themselves happy by following their own goals, and it’s difficult to know your goals without knowing yourself.
Below The Beltway linked with Great Minds Thinking Alike
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[...] Okay, maybe I’m being a bit presumptuous, but, once again, Brad Warbiany has a post up that echoes alot of things that have been going through my head lately. [...]
Hey Brad, I think you’re on the right track! One of my favorite maxims (and I think I probably got it somewhere else - just not in these exact words) is “you can’t live someone elses dream”.
I pull it out anytime someone is trying to decide which direction to go - or trying to push me in a direction that I know wouldn’t work for me.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it!