闲人

Perhaps in essence, the purpose of life is to discover how to live.

For a large part of my life, up to the end of my first real job in fact, my direction in life was somewhat imposed on me. To strive, to succeed. These values were impressed on me when I was too young to question them, and when I developed the faculties to question them, they were so ingrained that they were taken to be virtues automatically if I didn't direct attention to them.

But I did. I realized that that kind of life was not for me. After coming to Japan I moved closer to my real personality: aiming to exert minimal effort while satisfying my needs and wants. Which worked well for a while, but nothing is really stable I guess. A project comes along, or you get a manager which demands too much, or you get assigned to work with dysfunctional people, which ruins the balance.

I guess my next phase would be to really give thought to the how of living. Up til now, the questions I've asked myself were "why do I exist?", "what do I want from life?", but I've rarely given conscious thought as to how to live. Or more precisely, how to live so I can feel that my life is well lived.