So for the past weeks I have been through a strange mental journey of coming to a temporary conclusion of the belief that-“Life is hard”.
You may say, “Well of course life is hard.”
I am not questioning this strong fact. But let’s ask ourselves a simple question for the sake of curiosity and truth- “Does believing in the fact that life is hard make us do work where we can give a 100% of ourselves?”
Before answering the question, I would like to give you a brief background information.
I am in the process of healing from my mental health problems. I have severe social anxiety and a little bipolar disorder. For instance, I find it hard to go out of my home on a daily basis because I am afraid of interacting with people. And I have problems forcing myself to do anything because most of the time my mood dictates every action I take. It makes me feel crazy to do anything if I must use willpower to force motivation into my soul. Mind over body does not work for me consistently.
However, I can best do the things I have a strong emotionally powerful vision for or things that I am passionate about. The problem is my curiosity questions all the powerful visions and I am not passionate about something in the Steve Jobs style.
“You have to have a lot of passion for what you do… because if you don’t, any rational person would give up.”
Steve Jobs
Now, story time.
So nowadays I am staying at home most of the time partly because of anxiety and partly because I switched to an online Bachelor of Business Administration degree(I know most of my friends have graduated but I don’t compare myself to others).
And sometimes I get two of my cousin brothers (10year old’s) visiting our home during at noon time. They basically watch anime and only ask me if a certain movie is on hotstar or Netflix. I just tell them, and they do everything else. They are experts little 10year old’s. Right??
So, one day they were watching an anime that I watched season one of years ago. The anime’s name is Tokyo Ghoul.
As I watched it with them, I got interested.
In my free time I watched all the seasons of Tokyo Ghoul, and I was particularly inspired by a character in this anime.
His name is Hide (spelled Hye-Day). He is not the hero. He is the hero Kaneki’s best friend. In fact, we don’t see much of him in the anime. But his role in the ending of the anime is significant.
He is the person who is selfless, sacrificing, a true leader.
I don’t want to spoil the anime for you. You can watch Tokyo Ghoul on Netflix.
But I just wonder, what makes a person so determined and selfless. It’s certainly not in believing that life is hard that a person does selfless acts.
One can occasionally do hard things in life, but it takes extraordinary reason to do hard things consistently and becoming successful at it and “Life is hard” is not an extraordinary reason.
So I just started experimenting with different perspectives. First, I used the belief “Life is hard” to motivate myself to study more. I studied consistently for a week for a short amount of time. It was consistent. I chose this belief from observing people in my life. It’s their belief.
But the process of forcing myself was mentally taxing and exhausting. I was not happy.
Secondly, I resumed to my normal way of being and I read fiction novels and listened to my favorite songs.
I realized from all this that an inspiring future expectation creates passion. But it is not easy to have an inspiring future expectation that is also realistic.
So I am going to my career counselor for an appointment to help me pinpoint my post-graduate plans for me.
But to answer the question- “Does believing in the fact that life is hard make us do work where we can give a 100% of ourselves?”
The answer is NO!
I know life is hard. I also know this- life is beautiful. Beauty mesmerizes us and a beautiful future inspires all of us.
And it is not possible to give 100% of yourself or myself to the work unless you or I secretly love that work.
Thank you for reading this blog post. Also, I am not a mental health or career expert. I am Anirban, I am just an average person. This was a blog post about my realizations and story. If you like this post, then share it and comment what you want to comment. See you next time!