In Pursuit of Happiness

Feb 8 2016:

We all want to be happy. But what is happiness? Can happiness be different things to different people? And why do we try to post notions of happiness on others. Perhaps some people can genuinely be happy with materialistic things. Some can be happy by only about thinking for themselves and yet some are happy when they think of others’ good. Can the pursuit of happiness lead people up the path of self-destruction?

Depression

Depression is not the absence of happiness, it is the absence of vitality.

Real depression isn’t being sad when something in your life goes wrong. Real depression is being sad when everything in your life is going right.

Burnout 2

Seeking answers to questions

• What do I know? What I am knowledgeable about?
• What skill do I have? What am I good at? What marketable skill do I really have?
• What do I like to do? What interests me?

…and that elusive combination of the visual Venn diagram of the above questions wherein lies my career sweet spot.

And in my moments of vulnerability and depression, the answers I get are

• I don’t really know anything, well enough. I know many things but I have no specialization.
• I don’t really have any specific skills. Nothing really marketable. I have grown to my level of incompetence.
• I don’t want to do anything. Nothing really interests me, nothing that can earn me money.

Where do I turn to to find answers, to find inspiration, to find motivation, to go beyond going though the motions in my career? Good sense tells me I will find all answers within me. But what if I don’t like those answers? What if I want to change those answers? Where do I get the strength to do that? Yeah yeah, that’s also all inside me. Oh fuck it !!!!! This whole ‘it’s all inside me’ thinking isn’t helping, even though it is most logical. The signs of burnout keep returning more frequently now.

Waiting for Death

With the latest death penalty victim, Yakub Memon, there’s a lot of debate on whether there should be death penalty or not. I am not going to add to the debate. It is an endless debate. But the episode with all the media hoopla around it and a discussion around it got me thinking about Death.

Come to think of it, in life, death itself is certain. No one is immortal, at least not yet, and each one of us is destined to die one day for sure. And yet death is completely unpredictable. One could die any moment due accident or heart failure, or live a long life of more than a hundred years. No one can predict when one will die. Now think of this from the viewpoint of a person on death penalty. The person knows exactly when he/she will die, the date and time of his/her death is predictable (well almost). Imagine living like that. Three days from now, at 7:00am you will die. Just living through that is a creepy harsh punishment.