闲人

Perhaps our task in life is merely to find our soul.

Not a soul as a transparent ethereal copy of a person, but what we choose to be, the values we choose to embody.

I have spent most my life in a results-based society. People constantly measuring others' worth by exam marks, income, house ownership. When will you get married? When will you have kids? Well-meaning relatives giving clichéd advice "you should pay towards your own home since you're paying rent", "you should have kids soon otherwise you'll be too old and tired to take care of them".

I've always cared less for these things than people assume I do. Perhaps the milestones of success are so ingrained in them that they fail to grasp the concept that some people don't value the same things. Some people might think it's sour grapes. Some people might think I'm expecting my family to cover for me if I fuck up financially, which I can't completely deny. But all in all I've never been overly attracted to these results.

The thing with a results-based value system is it is ultimately short-sighted. Death is one of the few certainties of life. It is the only true end result, regardless of how one's life has been lived. Measuring one's life by results means that we all end up equally dead.

So I think life shouldn't be measured by results. It should be measured by process. Not what you gain during your lifetime, but how you live it. And I think discovering a way of life that allows our souls to flourish is part of that task.

At this point I have no job, no car, no house, no wife, no kids, and no soul.
But I know which one I'll strive to find first.

Which, having put it into words, has made me realize that while being profoundly sad regarding recent events, I'm feeling relatively ok considering all the things I don't have.