Dissatisfaction

I keep hoping that I have finally reached a turning point in my life and I will find the purpose which will drive me to make something of myself. I'm giving up Facebok. I thought about changing my email and getting rid of my YouTube account. Martha is gifting me a (practically) new computer and old iPhone. I've only been in Boulder, by myself, for less than a year. And I have only been working at my job for close to two months. This is clearly a big time of change for me.

I have struggled for years to ignite my life's passion again. I know the things that I love. My expectation of instant gratification and my short attention span certainly don't help me realize that true satisfaction comes from hard work. Thank God for the fun, inspiring times, but a great deal of any successful career is diligent practice of necessary techniques and concepts needed to excel. Practice can be an artform, but it's not real art. It's a means to an end. For me, playing scales is about as far from a creative act as writing out arithmetic on a blackboard.

However, my knowledge that any good thing requires work has not actually increased my work ethic. The result of attaining a worthy goal down the road rarely proves to be more attractive than all the fun things I could be doing instead. I think the power of all those distractions finds root in a constant appetite for entertainment. But in the end, entertainment is cheap, and like eating only junk food, it will lead to an unhealthy life if consumed excessively.

In most first world nations we face an ironic problem. The overabundance of choices (combined with a startlingly ruthless consumer culture) leaves us overwhelmed and things begin to lose meaning as we lose our perspective on the world. Today, so many things compete for our attention that we focus on how these products can improve our lives immediately. "This will save you time" or "there's an app for that." But things that require no effort have little value, regardless of utility. As the fox from The Little Prince says, "It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important." That's why handmade gifts generally hold more value than store-bought gifts.

I have placed the easy distractions of YouTube and Facebook at the center of my life. And so at last I experience something more strongly than ever before in my life: ennui. There have been times which I would describe as existential crises. I lose all desire to do anything; I feel as if life itself is futile and empty of real meaning. Looking at those times objectively, I think that for me they are precursors to times of growth. But now even the internet, the embodiment of entertainment, has lost its appeal. When I don't even want to watch YouTube videos, something is going on.

You clearly get what you put into life. And lately I have been coasting, not really trying to live actively or better myself. It was too much work and I settled for being comfortable. But just as I have become dissatisfied with eating pasta every other day, I have been longing for a more meaningful life for a long time. I know there is more to life than what I am experiencing.

Borrowing another idea from The Little Prince, it takes time and effort to tame something. But it is the things we care enough to tame that fills our lives with beauty. The stars are special for the little prince because he knew that somewhere was his flower. Work is not fun or appealing, but "I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.”