Maybe the problem is that I expected it to be easy and learned too late that is extremely challenging. The difficulty of life combined with the disapointment brought by major experience (love, work, friendship) keeps me up or makes me bury my head under the pillow. Either others find the benefits and pleasures of life to strongly outweigh the negative side or they are so well-disciplined that they find it natural to persist in working their hardest to improve their lives. The source of all of this hope and perseverence always evades me. All of the brilliant meritocrats as well as diligent laborers - the honorable people who create all of the comforts, ideas and gadgets - do not make any sense to me. Drug addicts, suicides and lunatics are more comprehensible.
That is perhaps an exaggeration. I understand that the creators and makers do their good deeds with the backing of strong work habits and societies with an appropriate environment for entreneurship. From relatively early on, they have the right attitude and the mental artillery essential for backing up that attitude. The pressure of society and family might also have real meaning for them. Though some reflection might reveal that it is not worthwhile to do well, they can't very well escape the demands to be on a level with peers and to bring the bread home for their wives and children.
I am blessed with no discipline or feeling of responsibility and I do not care to improve my life, which is already comfortable enough, though I am not wealthy by any means. At the same time, all major avenues of endeavor seem far too challenging. Any possible field that I might pursue demands more dedication and focus than I can possibly offer. I have tried, though clearly not hard enough. I have had jobs in some of the thinking industries that America is so excellent at creating. They just don't inspire me with the same passion for advancement, happiness and success that they do with my peers.
Going it on my own is even more difficult and the rewards, though potentially greater, are harder to reap. Of course I do a variety of little things that keep me going, but the future is bleak. The fancy education and decent jobs also didn't give me any real skills. Oh, I probably could go back and interview and do all of that and make the skills I have seem like real skills, but the reality is that there is very little I can do while uncumbered with my frustrated and defeatist attitude. The amount of effort required to do anything well is so immense. It's made even more immense by the reality that all these things are not things that I care to do well.
The vast majority of people have their depressive moments and self-doubt, but they are able to pretty much jump on the track at some point. They forge into an industry or into academia and know they must work hard and play some games in order to make sure that their life can be assured. It is laughably late in the game for me, and I still haven't strapped myself into some wholesome track. Immature ideas and misconceptions about life still cloud my vision. Learning about the realities has come far too late.
The question of why others are so able to happily succeed continues to plague me. This may be one of the few questions in life that I find truly interesting. Why do all of these other people fight so hard to get over the challenges? I live in China, so one obvious answer would be that as a rich world citizen, I have never felt the extreme pressure that comes from being economically deprived and the resulting drive to better my position. This standard argument has some merit seems facile since plenty of my peers come from superior backgrounds to mine, economically at least, but they have shown a good deal more drive to surmount the brutal challenges of life.
My question struggle so much when the rewards are so mediocre? The answer is always that the feeling of having done something well is greater than any other. Religion and absolute truth may be lies created to comfort man and enable the powerful to control him. Death may really be a fading of our body into the dirt and nothing more. Sex becomes a tedious routine wiht any lover more rapidly each time. Marriage may be a wasteland (or as they say: who wouldn't try to escape from an institution?). The body and looks may fade with unforgiving speed. Travel and other fun always exist under the shadow of the 8 to 9 workday. Food and alcohol are mainly a source of gut and guilt. But work will always set you free.
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