Finding Ourselves

Finding ourselves, discovering our passion, going through life, is a constant change and path of learning and moving forward.

In my early years I was passionate about computers, I loved repairing them, reviewing the specs of new machines available, building computers, selling them, everything to do with computers fascinated me and gave me pleasure, I started my own little business based around computer repairs and sales. After a while I started to lose that passion, it become a burden, it didn’t give me much joy.

From there I found graphic design. Putting together flyers and adverts. It was new, it was challenging and it let me be creative which I had found was not entirely possible when it came to repairing computers. It was my new passion. I loved learning the programs I used, trying to find new and different ways to put together adverts and flyers for clients. I started another small business with my Mom and together we offered marketing and graphic design services. Again this was something I got a lot of pleasure from doing. For awhile.

Using those two as examples, they are things I still do, but I don’t get the same pleasure from them. They have become tasks rather than fun activities. I can’t help but wonder if that is the destiny of turning pleasures into jobs, or if they just weren’t real passions to start. I could also be the type of person who simply likes new challenges, enjoying the learning process more than simply sticking to a single activity.

That is what life is about, discovering ourselves, creating ourselves in the way that brings us happiness and a desire for life, I think. There are certain things that will give us pleasure every time we do it, and other things that are only great to learn, but once you know them they are not all that much fun to continually do.

We are not always going to absolutely love everything we do, we will always have the tasks we have to do regardless of our feelings towards them, but if it is something we do not enjoy and we do have the ability to change it, it is our responsibility to change them, life is simply not worth living if we are just doing everything we don’t want to simply because.

As the saying goes, “variety is the spice of life,” it keeps things interesting. There has to be variety in your life in some form. If you are working the same job day in and day out, working constantly and never taking time off, work becomes your life, it better be helping you achieve a goal that will make it worthwhile. A much better idea is to work as you need, and live life, don’t pretend you will get the time “one day” to do all the things you have sacrificed, you don’t get the time back, the “one day” will never come along on its own. It is our own responsibility to make that day happen, and then another, and another, making life worth it.

As we discover ourselves, we will have hard choices to make along the way. Not everyone can be with us for the entire journey. Our journey will lead us down a path with a destination that is the best fit for us, not for everyone. Others have their paths and could end up close to you, or very far away, all based on our own desires and dreams. This is not something to fear, it is the course of life. If everyone wanted the exact same things, and worked to get them in the exact same way, life would probably not be all that much fun.

It’s important that we spend our lives discovering and creating ourselves the way we want to, and not try to fit into someone else’s mould of what they think our life should look like, that can never bring us internal happiness. Trying to fit into someone else’s idea of what our life should be, we will constantly have an internal struggle that will bring anxiety and true unhappiness. The longer we live our life by other peoples expectations for it, the more we lose of ourselves and the deeper the unhappiness sinks until we either completely hate our lives, or completely break down into a shell of a person.

This is the life we have! We don’t have “another go”, we don’t get another turn to redo it, this is it. Make it worth it!