Who Am I and What Do I Want?



Translation from website:

Take a look at your priorities and your goals. Where did they come from? Are they the products of soul-searching, self-analysis and careful planning? Or are they a reaction to pressures from other people? Did you find them within yourself or within the pages of a magazine? The answers to these questions are important because they tell you if the person you’re becoming is someone you want to be. Here’s another way to look at it: do you want it (whatever it is), or do you just think you should want it? It’s not easy to follow your own direction in life. But it’s more possible than you may think. Question everything. Everything in your life needs to justify why it’s there. If you can’t come up with a good reason that actually comes from YOU, maybe it doesn’t belong.

Incidentally, this is what I have been mulling over for the past 2 to 3 months since I was hit by what i felt at that time to be a torrent of problems; and what I will likely continue to think about till the end of the year as I go on my various trips and have many (planned and unplanned) moments of solitude to ponder with. Nonetheless, I don't really agree that finding out what we want for our lives from within books or magazines or from talking to friends is entirely wrong because I believe different people discover things differently and seek different sources of inspiration... and besides, if we keep questioning everything, we may never actually get around to doing anything... In my view, sometimes, we just have to take a leap of faith.. besides, many things or people don't make sense at the point in time they exist or appear and can only be understood retrospectively... haha.. ok.. easier said than done, speaking from my own experience...

it's something to think about nonetheless.. before 2008 begins. :)

(continuation from above...)
last night, something (which i shall not elaborate on further) happened that triggered me to ponder more on the above topic, which is about searching for who we are and what we should be or do in our lives... whatever happened made me realise that at many points in our lives, we might have been blessed with glimpses or given clues of what makes us really really happy, or contented, or at peace... be it a beautiful friendship or relationship, beautiful moments spent with others, a nice trip somewhere, or doing something we enjoy... for these wonderful "things" in our lives, we may find ourselves wanting to capture or reminisce on those times, either in photographs, or diaries, or in conversations with others.. by so doing, we conjure up the good feelings again and soak in the sentimentality and all.... which is all well and good, i suppose... except that it just feels to me to be indeed a great pity if we do not see in these the opportunity to learn something about ourselves... about what is really important to us; and what makes us ultimately happy... i know of many people (including the individual who made me think up this bit of my blog entry) who spend their lives looking back at times of the past, at photographs, remembering the happiness they felt.. i wonder to myself, isn't making the future happy as important, if not perhaps more, than looking at a past that was? Not that i'm not a sentimental person myself (cos i do read my past blog entries too), but sometimes, holding on to the past (and not learning from it) just isn't going to help us build the future we want for ourselves...

indeed, life is full of lessons to be learnt with open eyes and open hearts, don't you think?