My life didn’t turn out the way I hoped it would, that’s no secret. It didn’t even turn out the way I thought it would and honestly, I have had a tendency to be quite pessimistic in my younger years, so I didn’t think very highly of myself nor my prospects in life.
Luckily, that whole pessimism thing was something I grew out of a long time ago. Some people think that I am a negative person even today though, because I am self-critical and I don’t hide my emotions, but that doesn’t make me pessimistic. Those people clearly didn’t know me in my younger days.
I am not perfect, and I don’t aim to be. I do want to always improve myself, so if my work isn’t acceptable to myself, I am not satisfied. If I bake a cake and others like it even though I complain about my work, it’s not that I’m negative or frustrated with myself. It’s that I am passionate about making a great cake. It doesn’t make me unhappy; it is something that inspires me to do better next time. Why would I pretend something is fine when I don’t think it is? When I am not satisfied, I am motivated to work even harder and it makes me happy.
Of course, when I make a great cake and it’s exactly like I wanted it, I am happy too, but I don’t feel motivated – in fact I feel a little bored. For some reason, I am more motivated when something is difficult than when something is easy. Easy isn’t as much fun.
I don’t like impossible challenges either, though. I don’t enjoy knowing I’ll fail, because I don’t enjoy failure at all. However, I just don’t like winning easily either. It’s a balance of sorts. I need both enough success and enough room for improvement for me to feel motivated.
I do fight longer than I should, because giving up is one of the worst things I can think of. I hate giving up, but I know that sometimes, giving up is the best thing to do. I only give up when I have exhausted all my energy and all my heart and soul on accomplishing something, but then I wholeheartedly give up. When I know that I have done all I can, I can accept that it is time to give up.
When I am not challenged, I get so bored and tired, I sink into this odd funk and can barely get up in the morning. My brain craves challenges, but if a challenge seems too difficult, I would rather not go for it at all.
If I know something to be impossible, I give up before even trying because I know I fight far longer than I ought to. I just don’t know how to make myself stop, because the challenge drives me. So, I don’t try because I know it will only hurt. I don’t want to push myself beyond my limitations because it hurts. I need to know that there’s a chance if I am to fight for something, but because I have literally no confidence in myself it was always rather a problem. I never really did anything with me life because I was scared and frustrated with myself.
Everything seemed impossible.
I am not at all competitive. Yeah, that might sound strange because I love a challenge, but it’s the truth. Competition actually de-motivates me and I often end up trying to avoid such situations to the point that I would even give up on things I love.
I have many times before given up on childhood dreams and hopes simply because I don’t like being around competitive people. Competition is not all bad, I suppose what I really dislike is interacting with very competitive people. I just don’t know how to do that in a positive way. I don’t really care about winning or losing, I care about having fun and honestly, I have had just as much fun loosing as I have had winning.
To me winning or losing has nothing to do with success or failure, but everything to do with growth.
I never wanted to be like this, you know. I always hated that part of myself, the part that gets motivated when challenged. I don’t want challenges, I want to have a quiet, relaxed life – a small home in the countryside, maybe a small garden with herbs and carrots and potatoes.
The problem is, such a lifestyle doesn’t offer much of a challenge. I need more. I don’t need something different, just something more. A career. Yes, I need work. I need to be less than perfect, because perfection would bore me to death. I need to be good at whatever I do, but I would hate to be the best.
It’s funny, because this was all subconscious behaviour – I was in no way aware that I am this kind of person! Well, I guess I always kind of knew – I more likely just refused to acknowledge it.
Of course, I am who I am, and I can’t change that. I can grow and change naturally, but one cannot by force change who we are.
Lately, however, I have started to see this part of myself as a strength instead of the weakness I always thought it was.
Not being satisfied isn’t a negative thing to me, it is a beginning. I didn’t write enough last week to be satisfied. Fine. I will do better now. I forgot to upload my posts again? Well, I have to try and upload faster instead of leaving the uploading part to a later. The cake I wanted to bake didn’t turn out as I wanted it? Great! I’ll try and figure out what went wrong and fix it next time.
If I am not satisfied with something it is an opportunity and I get more motivated by this lack of satisfaction, so it is a great thing – a part of me that ought not be suppressed for anything. It should be nourished and appreciated.
Yeah, I am not where I want to be. My life is not what I thought it would be. I have no skills, no abilities, no accomplishments – NOTHING.
I am 33 years old and if I died tomorrow, I doubt anyone except my mother would even notice. I’m not sure anyone would miss me. I don’t think anyone would care. Well, obviously my mother would. I was pretty lucky with her, because she never gave up on me, not even when everyone else did – even myself. I think it might just be the greatest gift she has given me.
If I died tomorrow and some divine entity came to collect my soul or whatever such entity would do, if it by chance asked me questions about the life I had had, I know what I would say.
If it asked me if I was satisfied with my life, I would say no. I am not. I wasn’t good enough, kind enough, clever enough, I didn’t work hard enough, and I was too worried about pointless things to ever truly go after what I wanted.
If that entity asked me if I accomplished anything, I would say no. I never accomplished anything special, never did anything beyond what was expected, never did anything even close to great.
When asked if my life had at least been a joyful life, I would say no as well. I was abused, abandoned and lonely. I was depressed and medicated to survive for years. I was traumatised by experiences that no one should ever have to go through, and I struggled both academically and financially all my life.
When asked if I affected others in a positive way, I would answer not enough. I was too selfish and in too much pain to truly love anyone and I was not strong enough to help those I wanted to help. I was not even strong enough to help myself.
When asked if I was happy when I died, however, my answer would be different from those above. I am happy now. I don’t have anything except that.
So, if asked what I did with my life if it was all so terrible and yet I had died happy, I would answer that I figured out how to be happy. Life is far from perfect and I still struggle, but I figured out how to be happy. 33 years and that is all I have done. Actually, 33 years is not too bad – if I am alive, that is.
Luckily, I am. Truly, it was all worth it. Figuring out how to be happy was really difficult for me, as I am sure it is for a lot of people.
Figuring out how to be happy isn’t really the end either. My life has not been satisfying so far, but that’s actually okay.
I am happy that I figured out how to be happy and I am grateful that I get motivated when challenged, because this is all I need to feel motivated about my life.
I have had enough success to know it’s not impossible, because now I know how to be happy. There’s also quite a lot of room for improvement in my life since it’s not anything like the way I want it. I needed some success to be motivated, because if not, I would not even bother trying. That means, I would not even bother trying to live life, but only just survived day to day.
I realised last winter that I deserve happiness, and even though it seemed close to impossible it didn’t seem entirely impossible and this last year it is all I have tried to figure out: who am I and what makes me happy? What even is happiness to me? Why does it take so much focus and hard work to be happy? Is it worth it?
Figuring out how to be happy is never the end. It’s the beginning.
