Posts tagged with money

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October 18, 2009

Should I or Should I Not? The Curse of Indecision

Most of us don’t know what we want to be in life. We come into this world thinking anything about everything – our attention spans never really slowing down. So to allay this feeling of overabundance, this feeling that there’s too many options to just pick one, we try them all. And it’s only until we’ve done everything and made a boatload of mistakes do we realize who we really want to become.

It all starts at childhood. At a young age, the first decisions we are presented with have to do with common, menial choices such as “What color do I want to wear today?”, “Which lollipop should I nag Mom to buy from the store?”, or “Which toy do I want for Christmas” – things like that.

And through some miracle, we pick something. We choose to wear red. We decide to get a strawberry lollipop. We wish for a toy car under the tree.

Of course, these choices are simple (as they should be for any child).

But then we get to the ‘messy’ decisions. The ones that few children rarely are able to decide upon.

Most notably for me, our place in the workforce.

As a kid, it wasn’t as easy as picking the biggest cookie in the jar, or picking out what shirt to wear. This type of choice had consequences. But, as kids, we don’t care for the consequences, we wanted the cool experiences that came with each job.

I tell ya, looking back on my job choices now, I’m not sure how much sugar I’d consumed throughout my childhood. I’ll list them here, just in case you’re curious:

- an artist

- a surgeon (to fix people)

- a famous cook who had his own show on local cable

- a firefighter so I could play with the hose (and save lives)

- a policeman so I could be on the hit-tv show “Cops” (and bring in the bad guys)

- a dinosaur from Jurassic Park

- a bull fighter

- Beast from “Beauty and the Beast”

Do you think this is indecisive? It gets worse…

Admittedly, the above list was a little ‘out there’. But when I became a teenager, my mind switched into ‘logic mode’. I soon was under the guise that the world ran on money. And in order to get money, I’d have to pick the job that earned me the most.

My list changed, but more radical ones soon popped up. Here’s my “revised” list:

- surgeon (to make money)

- actor (to make money)

- a basketball player (to make money)

- a rapper (to make money)

- a business owner (to make money)

- a lawyer (to make money)

I think you get the idea. As you can see, my list isn’t really that much shorter, but the focus completely changed. What’s even funnier is the fact that after making this new list, I still hadn’t found a career I really wanted to do.

And while I could’ve simply picked the job that got me the most pay, they each contained varying degrees of difficulty that I didn’t have the patience to put up with. That’s when things got ugly.

My final decision (not really)

My parents assumed that I was incompetent in choosing my profession, so they chose for me.

My final choice was – doctor.

It was at that point that everything made sense again. Well, I am the only son in the family, so I might as well be a doctor, right? And they do make a lot of money, so why not?

So life went on as usual – I made thousands of choices a year, not knowing where they would take me, with the mind that through all these messy decisions I would someday become a doctor.

Yes, life was grand except for one thing – I wasn’t exactly sure I wanted to be a doctor.

This wasn’t because of teenage rebellion, mind you. I liked the human body and it’s awesome abilities. If you really study the human body, you’ll know that it can do some pretty amazing things.

Whether or not it would keep my interest wasn’t the problem, but it was the time I would have to put in (more specifically, the time I would have to keep putting in).

To have no time for anything, but saving lives wasn’t what I wanted to do, no matter how much money was involved. I didn’t want to live my life almost completely for someone else (and I’m not talking about in terms of taking care of a family, I’m talking about being an on -call surgeon putting time I could spend with my future family into a sick person).

I have nothing against those who want to be doctor’s or need help from doctors, it’s just that I didn’t want to do that.

And with that knowledge, I decided to rewrite my list for the last time:

…….

I got squat.

I couldn’t find a single profitable job that didn’t have me sacrifice my time for money. It seemed indecision followed me everywhere I went and laughed at me when I turned my back on the medical field. Until…

My final decision (for real)

It was then that I realized, who said I had to pick one thing? Who said that I had to choose a conventional job? Why was doctor, lawyer, basketball player and other similar jobs the only choices I had?

This became my final list and my final decision:

- Blogger

- Philanthropist

- Presenter

- Future husband/father

- Traveler

- My own personal translator

- Entrepreneur

- Leader

- Orator

- Video gamer

- Learner

In other words… I want to be me.

You could say that I’m still being indecisive. I haven’t picked any one thing. The curse is still with me.

But then again, maybe I have picked one thing, and maybe that one thing should have been what I chose all along. I should have chosen to make a career out of being who I am.

I’ve chosen my path. All I ask now is what did you want to be when you were younger? What are you now? Surprised? Accepting? Happy? Sad? Share your story.

Creative Commons License photo credit: VirtualErn

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16 comments

September 15, 2009

Would You Rather Have Pleasure Without Pain?

“Nothing brings more pain than too much pleasure; nothing more bondage than too much liberty, (or libertinism.)” – Benjamin Franklin

My birthday’s coming up this week Saturday, but I’ve told my mother that I don’t want anything (except that she keep supporting me). She kept asking if there’s anything I want, but I replied to her what I want she couldn’t be able to get me.

As a young adult, there are material things I like to sometimes indulge in (video games, video games, and more video games, just to name a few), but for the most part there’s nothing out right now that I particularly like. Therefore, I don’t want video games.

I’ve recently become obsessed with “earning” things. To be more specific, I really like getting things on my own, through my own effort, no matter how painful it may be.

Before I elaborate here’s an example: would you rather earn the money to buy something you’ve always wanted, or would you rather it be handed to you? While I’m sure a good number of you would no doubt pick the second option, think of it this way:

Not having worked a day in your life, you are given a thousand dollars every day for no reason whatsoever. At first you’re thinking “Hooray, time to do some spending!” You go out and buy clothes, food, luxuries, or whatever. Then, after a few months have passed, and you’ve bought everything you’ve ever wanted, you’re still getting money. By now, you don’t know what to do with it. You’ve bought everything you’ve ever wanted, right?

You instead begin to think “Well, I don’t need it anymore, so I’ll just give the money away.” And from here on in, you invest your money into productive and progressive movements that will better serve the planet and the people in it, and you live happily ever after, right?

Wrong.

You see, if you were given one thousand dollars everyday at 12 a.m. (keep in mind you haven’t worked a day in your life), you wouldn’t think to give it away. You’d be thinking “Yes, more money!” If you lived this lifestyle, you wouldn’t assert value with money. Money would be just a means to buy stuff. That would be all you know.

People, in general, learn about the world (both the good and bad aspects of it) through school, use that education to get a job, and use the money from that job to buy stuff. But with the imaginary money giver I’ve created, you don’t have to do any of that prerequisite stuff. You can just get money. You can move straight to the pleasure.

In this lies the problem. People who end up getting pleasure without pain eventually end up hurting themselves in the worst way possible.

Here a few examples of pleasure without pain:

Thievery – he may have taken in pain to get the gun to rob the bank, but the effort of people who had their money stolen will never equal the effort of getting the gun. The end result is most likely prison

Friends with “benefits “- at least one person will develop feelings for the other. Relationship and/or friendship typically ends

Free allowance - kids come to expect you to give them money every week for doing nothing, usually. Kid could possibly grow up to be spoiled

Cheating on tests – getting the answers without the pain of sitting on your butt and studying. Kicked out of class or in more extreme cases, expulsion

Cheating on people - getting physical/mental satisfaction while avoiding the pain of a current relationship. The result tends to be a breakup

So why is pain important?

Pain is necessary because it teaches us value. Whether it be the pain of waiting for an appointment, the pain of working towards a goal you want to reach, or just the pain of watching your child grow up to not need you as much anymore, it’s all usually for the best. Not all pain is good, but the pain that helps us grow is.

My mom’s paying for college. You would think that I’m getting this for free. But I’m not. I’m going to college in order to work hard and get the grades so that I can learn and be educated. It’s pain for my mom right now, but in the long run it’ll be pleasure (the thought of knowing her son has a degree). It’s pain for me because I have to make the grades and sit my butt down and study, but in the long run that will also be pleasure.

This site is running because I’m paying for it. It’s not free. But in the long run, no doubt what I take pains to do now will become my pleasure later. Do you think that I write on this blog because I have to? Yeah right. It’s because I want to. I write to inspire others and I use the pain of trial-and-error (when deciding whether or not this is good enough to publish) towards that end.

As for my mom’s request to get me a gift, she can’t buy me the gift of “earning”. She can’t give me the gift of “pain”. I don’t think I’ve done anything to warrant a present. But I would like for her to say ‘Happy Birthday’. Life is hard, so I think I’ve earned it :) .

Creative Commons License photo credit: TheeErin

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