We are seeing one of the biggest contradictions in history happen before our young eyes:
Pharmaceutical companies are improving the quality of our daily lives life.
Breakthroughs in medicine are letting us survive more accidents and diseases than ever.
Never before we have taken care of our health and fitness, worrying about what we eat, how we sleep and the exercise we do as much as now.
The result of all of this is that we are living longer.
We have more time.
On the other hand…
Corporations are looking for the young gems, trying to find the next genius twenty-something.
Kids finishing highschool and college are starting their own companies as soon as possible, so they can fund the next Facebook.
Education is hurrying us up to have as many degrees as fast as we can in order to be able to compete at the top (whatever that means).
The result of all of this is that we have to run to keep up.
We have less time.
Do you see the contradiction?
We are acting as if life were a race, constantly competing against each other, holding other people’s success as standardized goals. We are worrying about speed instead of direction. Our addiction to productivity and accomplishment is taking away the joy of today’s quality of life.
This would be fine if people were happier, if today’s youth were cheerful about their situation. But that’s not what’s happening, the burden is too heavy for many of them.
This is what happens when you’re constantly moving, constantly comparing, constantly winning: few get ahead, many quit, and many more just get frustrated.
I do believe that we have to invest and work hard when we are young, but we also have to understand that we have a lot of time ahead of us.
Don’t believe what they tell you, there is no rush.
It’s ok to unplug, it’s ok to relax.
It’s ok to slow down when you no longer see what’s happening out the window.
After all, the whole point of living longer is to live better.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post. Always a good reminder. There so much comparison with the super rich and super successful, that we somehow believe that to be ’successful’ we have to have created a facebook. Success shouldn’t be defined by others…only ourselves.
Thank you Russ, glad to have you here sharing your thoughts.
Way to point out that contradiction! I’m smack in the middle of it
I feel that I’m in a race. I need to be smarter, more educated, have more money, and have more successes than my peers. I feel the competition fuels me and drives me to work harder.
At the same time, I have felt burnt out multiple times.
I’m going to write a blog post about how I define success. Thanks for the inspiration
You are indeed a good example of what I’m talking about. Can’t wait to read that post.
This is like a sign from God!!! It’s like a coconut fell on my head and woke me up. I swear I was just talking to my friend about how it seems like I’m never gonna finish school, that my “deadline” is almost over, that I need to take more classes and stress the heck out to accomplish this. Thank you so much for making me realize that I don’t need to rush. I wish you would of written this post a month ago before I started to take four classes. I failed one and have to take it again because it was too much for me. Especially if you work full-time. Oh well, that’s what I get for rushing
Thanks again.
Good for you Cheila, and sorry for not coming up with this sooner
Great post, as usual, Carlos!
Jun, check out this post I wrote a little while back. I think you’d appreciate it: http://www.gurugilbert.com/2009/06/10/the-worst-word-in-the-english-language/
-A
Great post Carlos. I definitely see the blatant contradictions in how we live our lives as young people these days BUT…….I have to disagree with you on the part about there being no rush(I’m 19 btw).
Would one not want to attain the highest possible quality of life while still young enough to enjoy it?
Why wait?
We tend to overestimate the future. It’s called happiness hyperopia. We believe that all this effort, hard work and suffering will somehow turn into a “high quality of life” at some point. In doing that, we forget that life’s quality is subjective, and you need to define your own before going after what the world calls high quality of life. Also, we forget that life is always now, not tomorrow.
Last thing: Schopenhauer says that happiness begin in the body’s health. You’ll never be healthier as when you’re 19. It’s not crazy to invest and work hard, but you do need to live those years to the fullest. After all, we regret the things that we didn’t do more than the things that we did.
Awesome observation, my friend. It’s the old “hurry up and wait” problem. We get in such a hurry to do as much as we can as soon as we can that we soon burn out, or become obsolete… and then have to live to 110 feeling useless and past our prime. We should not be hurrying at all; now is the time to chillax.
I know parents who are stressed out about getting their babies on track for the “right” pre-school, so they can get to the right track for the best colleges!! These babies are already in the rat race!! Craziness, Carlos. Not me… I’m gonna take my sweet time getting to the end of my life, aging like wine, baby!
What a good point. Many of us don’t get to choose where to start. We have to make the effort to learn that there are other ways…
Direction is definitely more important. I like how you put that. Heck that was the number one thing I noticed about productivity websites and became the whole theme for my blog.
You know Carlos, this post needs to spread to the mass population.
To the single women nearing their thirties, depressed that they’re single and not married. The seniors in their 50’s who are still working because they love their work but feel like “hey, I shouldn’t be working, I should be retired because all my friends are.” All my old female high school classmates that I caught saying, “all the other girls from high school are married, have children, or both. I’ve got to catch up.”
It is definitely something that actors need to read and remember when we are going to different auditions, getting rejected time and time again, then going around our friends whom chose more traditional career paths and watching them come to the milestones of the conventional life. When you see your friends graduate, get their 9-to-5, get married, buy a house and have kids while you’re still on your journey you start to second guess yourself, feeling like you’re “behind”, losing the game of life. But it only happens when we forget our definition of success and take our eyes off our own journey and look at life like a race and competition.
Great post.