martyfartywarty

¹

The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness while they snub contentment. ~Doug Larson

I’ve been thinking about this word for a while. Just like how the universe wouldn’t get formed if even just one of the physics constant was a little bit different, it always makes me wonder what other life I can have if it didn’t turn up the way it did. Would I be happier now? would I be happier later? or is there even any difference?

Do you often wonder about this?

Happiness of course is whatever you want to define it as. To me … it is a state of which I am satisfied with myself. People keep on saying that happiness is a journey, not a state. But to me it is a state, so be it. I am talking about happiness that is more to just being content. It is not a state when you were happy when you eat your favorite ayam goreng, or when you get pooed by a bird (it’s a lucky sign according to the popular chinese belief), or when you manage to get a decent job. Once you are happy, you will be happy for a while because it is an accumulation of joyful events in your life. That kind of happy. I know I’m not being as clear, but my mind is currently clouded anyway.

It’s easy to define what was happiness in the prehistoric era. The challenges for those times were to avoid being eaten by other animals, and to feed the stomachs. Therefore the moment of living itself brought happiness to The Flintstones. Challenges correlated with happiness. Once culture and civilisation played a part in human’s life, suddenly filling our stomaches required us to get a job. So, we of course had to get a job. We did that, and then we were happy, again. A typical life of someone who lived 1000 years ago would be: born -> got a job -> (maybe procreated because that also made us happy :p) -> held the job for the lifetime -> died. Simple.

Happiness is a need for all of us. The prehistoric people were at the bottom of the pyramid, and Maslow said it is a normal progression to crave for more satisfaction in life when all the lower satisfactions have been reached. At the top of the pyramid, there are self-actualised people. Most of us fall into this category - people who are working toward fulfilling our potential, toward becoming all that we are capable of becoming. But here is the thing: what is it that each one of us are capable of becoming?

I am graduating this year. I have yet to come to terms with it. I won’t have ’student’ as my occupation anymore very very soon. I won’t be able to pay concession fee anymore (damn), and there are few more tidbits that come with it. The end of uni opens up a big hole about what can I become? Decisions have to be made at the end of the day, regardless of how much I wonder what it would be like if I decide otherwise². Ignorance is bliss and I wish I won’t spend more time thinking about it. Hobos sleeping on the road only worry about whether they can get food and a place to sleep for the night. Why the hell do I need to worry more?

Well I hope I will be able to find my happiness, sometime even in the faraway future, and I hope everyone who have to make similar decisions as what they are capable of will be, because thinking about it too much will make life less enjoyable.

ps. Gargh my last post was two months ago! &#@%#*! Work, recruitment and thesis are really stealing my time away…

1. photo by lusi [↩]
2. it reminds me of The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost [↩]

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. ~Confucius

I see my life is like in a stage of clay waiting to be molded. The clay has been put together in one place ready to be used, but I am not sure what shape I should mould it into. My academic study will finish next year with my graduation. Without a doubt, that and my industrial trainings will ensure that I can get a job after that.

There are many things that I want from a job. My highest priority: it has to be enjoyable.

I remember having to go through the subject with the worst lecturer in my life (that bastard). It was just too hard for me, no motivation whatsoever :( so: zero enjoyment. I admit that it was not just his fault, it is mine too for not trying harder. I’ve learned my lesson: I will do anything to avoid that situation again. So if the basis of the job is not conducive enough to enjoyment, forget it.

I find another aspect of enjoying a job lies with the people I work with. I want it to have work colleagues like my life-long friends. People always says two brains are better than one - I’ll simplify: more brains are always better. That is why I think motivation to collaborate is the most important thing to make multiple minds work together as a giant clock. Just like grid computing can only be a ’supercomputer’ when all the interfaces are specified properly within each cluster.

I would not be able to go through my uni achieving what I have done so far without pyko and Chii. I found many common grounds with them, thus walking (3 of us) together makes me feel a lot stronger than standing by myself. Sharing is caring, so what can be a better idea than working with them as work colleagues? :D

Challenging work will be another one I want from a job. At this point in time, I honestly don’t know what I want to do, but I DO know what I do NOT want to do. Before in my first industrial training, I will be happy to do anything that I can help other people with, bearing in mind that it has to be useful (not just a shitty job they gave me just because they don’t have anything to do). Now though, things are a bit different. Life is too short to be spent on doing crappy job.

I’ll give you one example I thought of, people who has to write technological code of conduct for the Bank; The code of conduct I meant is basically the piece of paper that I have to sign when I got employed. The one that outlines that ‘employee cannot open personal email, cannot use the Internet for anything else than the work supposed to be conducted’, blah blah blah… It is obvious to me that the piece of work is very important, especially to set the benchmark of security for the Bank. However I cannot set myself to work on it (and no one ask me either, *phew*), simply because it is there just to cover other people’s arse when bad things happen. It is boring, shitty job alright.

The last thing is money. Even though money cannot buy happiness, not having enough money will definitely make my life a lot harder. Most probably I won’t be able to get the kind of lifestyle I want, if I don’t have enough funds to keep me going. A good job is a job that pays off fairly. What kind of job will allow me to get enough money to live, without sacrificing the quality of the job measured by the previous two priorities?

I think this is the $1,000,000 question. And I hope I will be able to answer that as soon as possible.