闲人

There are stories like The Monkey's Paw, among others, where wishes are magically granted but bring with them unforeseen side effects, or happen through unexpected means, such that the wisher ends up no better even with the wish fulfilled.

In life perhaps there is no malevolent magic attempting to twist our wishes into something ugly, for we exert our own effort to make our wishes come true. Nevertheless do our wishes not all come with prices to pay, and unforeseen related events? But having expended our own effort to attain our wishes most of the time we convince ourselves that it has all been worthwhile. Maybe we are right some of the time, but how often?

Lacking magical powers, our wishes require time and exertion, which become the bare minimum price we need to pay, and having paid it, how many people are willing to acknowledge they are no better off? Even when we end up dissatisfied after attaining something, we are so adept at convincing ourselves of our own merits and so reluctant to admit fault that we tell ourselves and anyone who cares to hear that the result is worth every bit I've sacrificed for it!

To quote from the original Monkey's Paw, "If you must wish, wish for something sensible."

It is hard to know what is sensible these days. Everyone trying to tell us what we should want, from society telling us we should want good grades/school/work/salary to the bombardment of commercials telling us we should want a variety of things. But it's the normal wishes that are dangerous. I know someone who probably wished for a family, a stable job. Yet he's so miserable at his stable job that provides for his family, that he complains almost every day and is so filled with negativity that it spreads to anyone that comes into contact. He's probably convinced himself that it's worthwhile, even though I think I would rather die than live so negatively. Who knows, maybe to him, it is?

Whatever the case, if you must wish, wish for something sensible.

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.

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.