I must inquire why most from my generation make an assumption that a nine to five is a necessity of life? In my intermediate accounting course the professor stated, “you get up at 6:30, you go to work, you get an hour lunch, you finish at five and then they expect you to tie the rope; but, that’s just how life is.”
The misery in her voice trembled out the 15 years of lost time spent with an unenjoyably resented routine.
Through my eyes, it has always appeared as if the generation of my parents seem to hate their way of life. So often I have heard, “Oh! College is the best time of your life. Enjoy it while you can because I promise you will miss it.”
This seems pitifully absurd, not only due to the meaningless dwelling on a past experience, but for the fact that if you are acting in an efficient manner joy should only increase.
The cliché states that we live for today in preparation for tomorrow, yet I find that most dwell in yesterday and detest the dreary predictable tomorrow that approaches more swiftly with each second.
Sure, we build upon the experiences of the past for the present and future, but that still exists within the wonderful now through our current reflections. One should always be exerting actions as close to the optimum as one is capable of to achieve one’s own happiness.
I am not trying to articulate that one should merely seek the lower physical pleasure of the body to fill the duration of one’s existence, nor am I attempting to come to a conclusion that contradicts the necessity of current work to future benefit. I am saying one’s perspective is a practice.
Whether you allow your eyes to be passively molded by the conditioning of others or complacently participate with whatever opinions your fallibly perceived superiors tell you, your mind will never grasp that optimal serenity. Your actions are mere swaying strings from an external puppeteer.
It makes me sick that one should have the shameless audacity to plea to a class to remember that life isn’t all sunshine and smooth sailing, but rather a desolate path on cracked concrete ending in an inevitable cliff.
To me that is worse than suicide, for this is only suicide of the mind, leaving a shell of a self loathing creature that once was an atlas. Life is not suffering.
We live in a reality composed of both the tangible and intangible. If the mind guides the limited possibilities of the tangible to acquire the infinite possibilities of intangible interpretations and reactions, then our minds determine our happiness.
Depending on the individual, the means to optimality will vary. However, misery and self-loathing are never the result of an adequate practice of the mind.
So why should we voluntarily exist in a system we hate, performing actions we resent, for an end that was initially the means to acquire joy.
You are the atlas holding up the world, and that world will instill painful resentment or joyful purpose, see it as you see fit.
Charlie is a senior majoring in finance.