Crossroads

There are many questions in my head: what is it that makes for a good life? What even qualifies as "good", and how do I go about attaining it? What if I'll never be content with what I have, what if I'm a project person, constantly moving from one mission to another, restless in all the imperfection and unachieved possibility? What if I'll never settle down into "okay", what if I'll be spending the rest of my days trying to reach "impeccable"? What is a good person? Am I a good person?

What do I want to do with my life?

What are my biggest dreams?

What do I want myself to be?

The truth is, I don't know. I ponder and ponder, spend entire afternoons sitting in the library or walking in the forest, eyes staring straight forward but blindly, turned inwards onto something others wouldn't be able to see. I walk forward on automation - mind somewhere far away. I think and feel and think even more, but I don't know. I don't know if there even are any answers. I feel... strangely restless in the thought of, "maybe I'll never reach that state". Maybe I'll build up my life to the best of my ability and believe that this is exactly what I want, that this is something I can be content with, and yet... And yet something will forever be missing. 

My grandma is like that; a project person. She has to move on from one project to another, and when one gets finished, she loses all interest. She's incapable of finding enjoyment in the results, no, it's only the process she enjoys. That means she can keep things interesting, and her life is never static, but it also shows itself in the form of constant restlessness, dissatisfaction. There's always something new to move onto. Something is always wrong and begs to be improved, there's never enough. After my grandpa died over ten years ago, that trait of hers has gotten ever more enhanced - to the point where she doesn't feel a sense of belonging anymore, anywhere. I think she has lost her will to live. She's drying up, visibly wilting away... Physically and mentally. She's so small these days. She can't stay in one place, she can't stay put, restless soul, wandering from one place to another, searching, searching... But never finding. Nothing is good, no place is like home, there's nothing for her anywhere. She refuses help, refuses to acknowledge anything wrong in herself. She's dying, and I think she might not even mind. 

I... I'm scared I might end up like her. You see, I'm a massive idealist: a romanticist. I feel so, so deeply, so much so that all the feeling inside my body feels like a ravenous beast, eating me away. At times I want to laugh aloud and run as fast as I possibly can, not caring about the eyes on me, just basking in the joy and excitement of living. Sometimes I feel so restless, I have to go outside and walk for miles. At times, I want to climb onto trees and become a branch, form into tree bark and nettles, sway in the wind and soak up the sun. I want to jump from cliff to cliff, and laugh and shout, become... Pure energy, the essence of life. Just be. And the feeling can be so overpowering, I roll around in my bed and try to breathe from the pure happiness and excitement that makes my heart beat. And love, it can make me cry just because of its greatness. Sadness, pain. Fear, panic. Anger. This hectic life of pure sensing, of raw emotion that feels like it could move cliffs and turn tides and stare God in the eye, with unapologetic pride.

I'm afraid I might end up chasing dreams because of this relentless emotion. Will I spend my entire life searching for the next joy, the perfect rush of endorphines, the adrenaline and the pleasure, the strongest love? What if I'm so caught up in the strongest form of my emotion that I end up chasing something impossible, unlasting, and sacrificing everything permanent and sustainable in the process? Maybe this standard of enormous emotion is, well, too high... Maybe I should settle for something less.

Yet, I'm afraid it'll be unfulfilling - it'll leave me itching for something stronger, more. After all, I've gotten a big bite of what true happiness and relentless lust for life feel like, so can I settle for anything less? And if I do, will it keep nagging me, chewing me from the inside, until the day I die?

The thing is, I don't know what I want. I can tell you the outlines of a life I hope to reach one day, but that's so superficial, so shallow. Whatever it is that creates true contentment and the deepest layer of satisfaction, I don't know of... I can't name. I believe it can be attained in many different conditions and environments, so it doesn't really matter if I list all the little concrete things I've put together in my mind that would qualify as a "good life". What creates real happiness is something much less concrete, something abstract that can't be forced - it's not a job, a distinct idea of a family, a figure on your bank account, a certain status you've achieved, a prize. It just happens. You reach it, or you don't. Of course, shallow, superficial, concrete, touchable things contribute to that, since I doubt people in extreme poverty and constant risk of death can be the happiest people ever, but materially, your life can be nothing short of "perfect", and yet you might be the most miserable creature on Earth. Nah, I don't think I can list on paper what it is that I want in order to truly be happy, because that doesn't have a name. Inner peace? Fulfillment, meaning? Love? How do you plan love?

The thing is... Love, inner peace, meaningfulness cannot be planned. None of them can be mindfully chased in any way - they just fall into place, despite of the material conditions. You can't bullet point the steps you want to take in search of inner contentment, since no matter how much you try to become enlightened and satisfied, it might not happen - or maybe it will. In any case, I think it happens despite of your plan, instead of because of it. Even if you meet the person who, on paper, should be the perfect prince, the dream-come-true, you can of course pretend, but if there's no love, there isn't. You can play house and create a squeaky-clean image, a picture-perfect family, but if there's no love, there's none. No matter how pretty it looks. You can build up the perfect career, meditate intensely every day, sculpt your body into ancient Greek-level of perfection and achieve every level of traditional success imaginable, and despite all that, you can be so empty. Really, really empty. And that's the scariness of happiness - you can't perform it. You can't plan ahead and force it to happen. You can't reach a couple of mid-term goals, and boom: first prize in Happiness achieved! Happiness is so, so existential. Layered. It's a big, fat onion that's much more complicated than it looks like on the surface. With that being said, though, I think it's also kind of simple at the same time. Contradictory, this whole issue. It's simultaneously easy and devastatingly hard.

I suppose my big, unique, unheard of dream is to love and be loved, and moreover, to be content with my life - to the point that all this unease could just be shrugged off. What a big reveal, what a surprising wish! Nobody has ever wanted to be satisfied with their life's work.

But how... HOW? That's the hard part. Everybody wants to be happy, it's just the question of how that's the challenge. Like I said, I doubt it can be bullet listed and turned into paragraphs or mind maps, it's not something you can calculate or write a perfect, unfailing formula for. And what even is enough of happiness? Is it... Waking up and being okay with seeing another day? Is it being 50-50 on a positive mood, or what is the perfect ratio? 2:1? 3:1? God, who knows?

Everyone, at least at times, has doubts about their life and the direction it's taking. It's scary, because you can't tell beforehand what is going to happen in the future, and if this is going to be the thing you'll wind up regretting for the rest of your life as everything seems to take a turn for the worse. We can't tell the future, so every choice is a gamble. Intuition and logic, although always imperfect and influenced by our emotions, are the only tools we have in order to try and choose the right thing. I know that right now, I'm a bit doubtful about many things: was it the right thing to enroll in uni and choose this particular major? Should I keep living close to the campus, in an environment I dislike, or move farther away but to a nicer location? Is this really something I want to work with in the future? Are the people I'm keeping close the right ones for me?

We can't perform or plan happiness. All we can do is try to make the right choices with the information and emotion we have available during that moment. Maybe in retrospect, they turn out to be the absolute worst - or maybe not. I suppose there's no use in worrying about it too much, because that won't improve anything. Heck, if something, it'll just stress you out for no good reason, and might even debilitate you in your decision-making as you start overthinking and fussing about every small possibility that you can't predict either way. But right now... I feel so, unsatisfied in a way. Restless. It feels like this isn't what I want, but it's difficult to pinpoint it down to specifics. In general, everything is going well, right? - I'm in university and getting a dream degree, I've moved out and taken all the responsibility over my life, financially, physically, mentally... I'm dating a guy I really like, I have friends I really like, a family I love more than anything in this world. And yet. And yet. There's something missing, something wrong, something doesn't feel right... But what is it? What is this nagging feeling I have in my guts, this intuition that tells me that something needs to change, or else? And what is the "or else"? My mental stability?

All I know is that I don't know anything. There is much I'm happy with and from the outside, everything is probably going correctly - studies, job opportunities, volunteer work, family, relationships... But even though I'm grateful for doing so well in relation to those categories, there's something else, something different, outside of or maybe linked to the things I just listed, that's missing. I'll find the answer... Some day.