What’s Important?

January 17, 2010 2 Comments

It’s events like the earthquake in Haiti or Hurricane Katrina that makes me slow down a bit and think about the important things in life. In the Bay Area especially, I feel that we are all in a huge rat race. We’re trying to get rich and rise to the top. We’re trying to keep our jobs and maintain some semblance of a social life. I’m a victim to this myself. Every now and then we will hear about or experience the loss of a loved one. And for a couple days or a couple weeks, we’ll take some time to reflect and then almost immediately put ourselves back in the rat race. But why? In the past few weeks I’ve thought a lot about the meaning of life and what I want to take from it. I recently graduated from school and entered the work force full time. My job allows me a lot of flexibility, so I don’t have to be in at a certain time or stay till a particular hour. I come and go as I please. In the evenings or on the weekends when I’m not working I find myself looking for things to do. I get bored very easily. For a while I took up watching more TV or reading books. But that didn’t really fill the void. While it’s too early to be going through a mid-life crisis, I am finding it difficult to find a huge sense of purpose. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job and I love helping people in the ways that my career allows me to, but I feel that there’s something beyond that. Currently I fill my hours with exercise, TV, books, and a significant other. At 22 years of age I guess I’m not “supposed” to really be worrying about very much else. I’m making money, I’m motivated, I’m pursuing additional degrees, and yet for some reason I feel like I’m not focusing on what’s important. But I can’t seem to figure out what it is that’s important. I’ve given some consideration to coaching a recreational basketball team or mentoring in some way, so that I feel like I’m needed or appreciated in some way other than my career. But I’m not super into that kind of thing.

When I’m at work, I’m consumed and happy. I genuinely like being in the office, meeting people, and helping individuals create wealth. But I don’t want to come home and feel like nothing outside of work really does it for me. I don’t want to be the guy who’s on his deathbed and is known only for what he did in the office, not what he did outside. My experiences in this rat race are leading me to believe that it’s the American city-life society that cultivates this pressure to consume yourself in work. And it’s really not until you experience a life changing event that you realize how pointless the rat race can be at times. I work in a career where I am compensated purely on commissions and fees. While I am pushing myself to make a huge amount each month, I’m beginning to realize that whether I make 25k in a month or whether I make 10k, my lifestyle doesn’t change much at all. I still hang out with the same friends, partake in the same activities, and eat at the same restaurants. Although my options open up in terms of what I CAN do when I have a higher income, I don’t really take advantage of it. It’s still the same simple things that make me happy. So for those who found themselves without jobs or with investment accounts that lost tons of money in the last couple years – I would encourage you to reflect on the things you do for entertainment and fulfillment. How many of those activities cost a significant amount of money? Very few, I can guarantee that.
This post is very different from what I usually write, and has kind of jumped around from topic to topic. I apologize for the lack of organization in this piece, but I wanted to post something where I just wrote whatever it was that was on my mind. I’d be interested to hear your feedback on some of the ideas I expressed, especially if you are also recently out of your undergraduate studies.

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