9:21 a.m. - 2009-09-19
What Should I Do with my Life by Po Bronson
After interviews with more than 900 people who have struggled with the question of what to do with their lives, be it after graduation, quarterlife crisis or midlife crisis, this paragraph in his book struck me (reproduced verbatim here):
"Do not wait for the kind of clarity that comes in epiphanies. In the nine hundred plus stories i heard in my research, almost nobody was struck with an epiphany.
It was one of my biggest surprises.
Most people had a slim notion or a slight urge that they slowly nurtured until it grew into a faint hope which barely stayed alive for years until it could mature into a vision.
Most people feel guilty about wanting what they want and they feel foolish for wanting something impossible, and those censoring voices will bark like a pack of junkyard dogs, night after night.
Don't doubt your desire because it came to you as a whisper; don't think, "If it were really important to me, i'd feel clearer about this, less conflicted."
My research didn't show that to be true. The things we really want to do are usually the ones that scare us the most. The things you'll not feel conflicted about are the choices that leave no one hurt."
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I think the idea here is to nurture our little dreams and ambitions, like playing a musical instrument, learning a new language or subject... moving in the general direction of our goals. It will be a slow process but somehow we're getting there as long as you don't give up completely.
Like that Confucian saying at billboards at the mrt stations, "It does not matter how slow you go so long as you do not stop."
Funnily, the accompanying picture seems to be a sunset... not very hopeful. Lol. On second thought, it's actually a sunrise, ah! Funny how sunsets and sunrises look so similar they're often mistaken. It's like that psychological chestnut, the half-full or half-empty glass. Whether you want to see yourself as halfway approaching your goals or halfway losing your goals.
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In another part of the book, Bronson also mentioned how he faced his fears in the past, his weaknesses like how he'd avoided nonfiction writing, how he'd make up stuff to fill the gaps in his reports, but after a crisis in his life, he decided to deliberately take up projects that will make him confront his weaknesses, interviewing and talking to people, digging deep into their stories and feeling a genuine empathy, and even almost cathartic, as he listened to the lives of other people.
After he'd won an award for his nonfiction book, The nudist on the late shift and other true tales of Silicon Valley, he was proud that his weaknesses had turned into strengths.
Nobody had thought to ask him why he wrote the book the way he did, because they were celebrating the content, but it's exactly the way he wanted to improve himself, which affected his writing to make it more real and true, that helped him in the end.
