Tololy's Box

Feeling “behind the curve”, Tololy? That happened to me when I was about your age. I was 25 when I got out of the Marines, and most of my friends had degrees by then, had started their careers, some of them had started families, were home owners… etc. I felt like I was never going to have all the things they had. But by the time I was in my early 30s I had a better job, more money, nicer house, better cars, prettier wife, a nice investment portfolio… I had so far surpassed them that I even “upgraded” my friends to a better class of people! But a couple years later I realized my life sucked. And I didn’t know why. I used to be driving home an hour every day in LA traffic and actually saying to myself “My life effing sucks!”. On the hour driving to work in the morning, i’d at least be looking forward to being able to hang out with nerds all day doing fun nerd stuff, but no such luck when I left the office.

That’s going to happen to a fairly large percentage of the people you know who seem to have it all figured out. That’s just the way life is. My advice to you is to try not to worry too much about it. You’re a smart cookie and you’ll be able to get the things you want out of life. Just try to deteremine what it is that you think will genuinely make you happy, and work hard on that. Most the externals don’t amount to much in the long run, and it definitely isn’t a good idea to do things just to “fit in” with what everyone else seems to be doing. That probably won’t work for you, and it won’t work for a lot of them either, although they may think they’ll automatically be happy once they have all the things they ever wanted.

On the other hand, maybe you should just set your goals so high that you will never be able to reach them… that might work too

They appear to you that way,but truth is..most got the same feeling as you..and probably regard you the same way.

I’ve got no compass,I just do what I do and hope for the best.

Tol, that is exactly how I feel nowadays; I left my parents 10 days ago to work in another country, I totally feel that it was a stupid step of mine that may ruin my whole future; I do think a lot of that every now and then BUT I am pretty sure of that I should never compare myself to anyone else and so should you.
Besides we never know, I have faith in destiny, whenever I have this thought bugging in my head I just tell myself that everything will go as planned for and I only have to do what I have to do and not to think a lot of what life should do for me.

Tol, your post brought to my mind a poem that I’ve been going back to lately, by Mahmoud Darwish in a tribute to Edward Said:

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/710/cu4.htm

The outside world is exile,
exile is the world inside.
And what are you between the two?

——-

He loves a country and he leaves.
[Is the impossible far off?]
He loves leaving to things unknown.
By traveling freely across cultures
those in search of the human essence
may find a space for all to sit…
Here a margin advances. Or a centre
retreats. Where East is not strictly east,
and West is not strictly west,
where identity is open onto plurality,
not a fort or a trench/

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
- Henry David Thoreau

Provided that you can handle yourself in an acceptable manner any time any where in any place with any one, then everything is okay. Now if you are having a difficulty establishing a decent dialogue with the people around you especially your family, friends, neighbors, co workers, and so on then there is definitely a problem that needs to be addressed and remedied. You see our ability to communicate with our peers and the person we love and love us in the most profound manner is the single most important aspect of our life today. Yes there are a lot of ignorant, inconsiderate, shallow, and whatever other adjective you want to add living and sharing space with us, but unfortunately, they are here and we need to deal with them so as might as well get used to their presence in our life. You see we don’t live in a vacuum; it takes all of us collectively to make up this world. There is no way that we all are going to possess an extra ordinary level of intellect, but being human beings forces us to level with these people and try to reason with them and make sense out of everything they say and do. On the flip side, if we try to pretend that they don’t exist and dismiss everything they say and do as inconsequential, then we would be fooling no one but our selves. I have known a housekeeper that used to influence the decisions made by the chancellor of a major Midwestern University that has more than 36000 students and 11000 faculty and support staff members. So we can’t underestimate any one irrespective of the level of education and the type of possession or the role they play in shaping our society.

No one knows where they’re heading, we’re all lost even when it seems that we got it together.

What happened to adigapsatha.net?