Keeping up to expectations ...

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During the whole Corona Situation I questioned myself about the following things:

Those are quite existential questions, and no, I don't think that I am depressed or going to do something stupid ...

These questions are aiming to discover if what I have been doing my whole life is aligned with the values and my dreams for the future.

Looking back

For most of the people I know (including my self), our lives were planned by someone, and no, I'm not talking about God ... I am talking about the society, your family, the social pressure or any external entity that influences you.

So for example, since we are born, we went to the Kinder Garden, then to the primary school and lastly to the secondary school. Most probably these three things were chosen by your family or any closed person you have.

And that's perfect! Because I don't consider that at that early age you are going to be able to make those decisions, and that's the reason why they “picked” for you.

But now you are there, with your secondary school degree and the next question that everybody ask you:

“What are you going to study?” – by everybody ...

So yeah the people/society/ expect from you to study something. Like it or not.

Luckily in my case, I found something that I liked to study. So I spent 6 years of my life, and I am happy to say that I finished that stage with a Diploma that after allowed me to move outside my country.

No matter if you studied something or not, someone will come over you and ask another of those uncomfortable questions:

“Where do you want to work?” or “What do you want to do?” – by everybody again ...

Same scenario as before, the people/society expect from you to have a Job, get a Salary and work. Work every single day ...

At that exactly what I did! Even before finishing my studies I started to work in the field of my Industry, gaining experience (that's how they call it), and living in a pace that I still don't know how did I manage to work and study at the same time ...

Productivity is the key?

Since I started to work, I always hear that one should be ambitious and always look for something better. Do you know the phrase?

Never settle.

I used to say it to my self for mostly self-motivation, in order to do more, study more, work more, etc. more. I do think it's a powerful tool, because liked or not it took me where I am, but it's also quite dangerous and destructive.

This life-style demands that you are always productive (OMG I hate so much this word ...).

The problem that I have with the productivity concept is it doesn't consider the human factor. We are definitely not machine, that can be turned on/off given an instruction. So basically the more productive you are, the less time for yourself you have.

And here some people will reach out and say:

But if I can do more things faster, then I will have more time for my self and to do the things that I want right?

In theory, yes. But in practice, no.

Something that I learned from the whole journey is that, once you are in this mindset of productivity, it's quite hard to get off. So maybe you can finish all the tasks you had for the day, but trust me after you finish them you are going to look for more stuff to do.

And in the end, when you realized you just have done a just bunch of tasks that you “have to/must do”, but nothing for yourself ...

Well basically the people/society expect you to be productive, to always look for improvements, to be “better” ...

And that's the topic that I want to bring to the table, I would like to throw some open questions, that I don't have an answer yet but I'm on the way to look for one.

  1. Why do we work?
  2. Do we really need too much money?
  3. What is your ideal job?
  4. What do you see yourself doing your whole life?
  5. If you wouldn't work, what would you do instead?

The reason behind

I've been asking myself these questions, because before Corona, I was planning to change my life. Literally my plan was to quite everything:

Sounds fantastic right? Well, not if there is a Pandemic in the whole world ...

It took me some time to realized that my trip was not going to be possible in the near future. But all these things are still in the back of my head, and I wanted to share them with who ever is reading this.

Closing

As all the posts here, I didn't follow any structure or anything. I literally sit down and write everything that was coming to my head.

But I do hope that it made you think about one thing or two.

And please let stop thinking of being a better version of ourselves and start enjoying the present, because if we don't stop to observe what's going on, at one point we are going to look back and realized that we didn't accomplish what we always wanted ...

Thanks for reading. Ema.