Wednesday, April 18, 2012

To where next?

All my life, I have had people telling me to dream, to have aims, and to work hard towards getting them. I as a very practical person never had huge aims and bright ambitions. I have always been the one to be happy with what I have. I try to find joy in the mundane. It doesn't take a lot of money or effort to make me happy. Considering this, having future aims was somewhat hard for me. What will make me more happy has always been a mystery. Most people have aims and ambition regarding their professional lives and dream about owning companies and having important managerial positions in powerful companies. I never had that. 
As a teenager, being forced to conform to the society and surrounded by dreamy eyed kids aspiring to be successful people in life, I made up some dreams for myself as well. They were never absolute, it was never a live or die situation with them but I did work on them. I was not obsessed with them nor did I work extremely hard for them. There were frequent times when I almost gave them up considering that the work was too much and too intimidating, but the absence of aims is much more troublesome than statelessness of a failed dream. As the time kept crawling I kept my quest for my artificial dreams. As time passed they became more important, the importance of them slowly crept into my consciousnesses and their importance increased some more each time till they were full lifetime goals. Whenever someone asked me what my goals were, I had a list prepared. 
Fast forward ten years later. I am in a different place, still trying to achieve those goals but now a second realisation has crept in. They are finishing. I am completing my life goals at an alarming rate. While I have given up on the idea that attaining these goals will give me satisfaction in life, I do have to worry about the future. My current set of goals will all be complete in the coming few months. I have paid a price for attaining these goals, done things which I wouldn't have normally done. Been through bad times thinking it was necessary if I were to attain my goals. All this had a end. To be a certain person I dreamed to be. Slowly as I metamorphosise into this person, what am I going to do for the rest of my life?   
This will rarely affect my daily life as in an existential crisis doesn't cause me to stop living, it never has. I can always manage to be happy not withstanding any situation. Thing is in a longer run going to create problem for me. Society doesn't accept aimless people and they are frequently looked at with suspicion. Having aims makes a person decipherable, which is what actually everyone wants everyone else to be. As I become my ideal person, I have to come up with something new to keep up the farce. Thing is, last time I came up with such a farce I actually believed it and saw to it to its almost end. Will I end up doing it again? 

As I slowly realise that I am living my former dream, what does that leave the future with. As a 12 year old I was once asked the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" My friends came up with detail answers, all I could manage was "Happy". As a 25 yr old someone might ask me the same in another context and in my heart I will answer "Happy" but cannot say. At the end of achieving a few fake dreams, can one manage to conjure some more? After achieving everything you told everyone you were going to, where do you go next?