500 Words a Week - A Quest for Something More

Have we been guilty of treating our life like a homework assignment? 

A predefined checklist we must rush through that ensures we are living life “correctly”.

Get a job here, marry then, house next. This is a linear path for life, moving from one thing to the next. For some, this linear path may suit them perfectly. For others it may not, with regards to our career we may find ourselves on a winding path, with twists and turns. That’s ok, this may be the path for us, just because it doesn’t line up with the preconceived norms, doesn’t mean it is wrong.

Have we lost the quest for meaning in our life? The quest for something more, that resonates and calls to us?

Should we strive toward virtue rather than join the meritocracy? That places success above all other endeavours.

For maybe we would like a life defined by work that doesn’t follow us home. That allows us calm evenings, and free weekends. A work that allows us to rest our weary head each night without it encompassing all our thoughts.

Or maybe we do want work that we feel a form of struggle with, that we give more of ourselves too for certain amounts of time. 

The point is, it’s a choice we get to make, it’s not one that is forced on us. We don’t need permission to change, if we have found ourselves slipping into one side of the equation that doesn’t suit us. It may require us to take an honest stock of our lives, and ask ourselves is what we are currently doing worth the parts of ourselves we are sacrificing?

We have been inundated with information and knowledge but received little guidance of what it means to chase a life of meaning, of something more. To move against the natural impulse of life that calls us to constantly move upward. To move against the materialistic shallowness and individualism that we have become inundated with on social media. That everything must be done for a reason that leads to growth, rather than doing something for the sake of it. For our own enjoyment.

For each prominent figure of our past, whose work and dedication is paraded in front of us. There are countless others who quietly went about their business. Who were not worried about topics of success and fame, but ones of value, meaning and virtue. Have we drifted from this concept? Should we strive for a life lived in a quest toward finding out what is meaningful and important to us, rather than accepting the standards that are given to us?

“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” - George Eliot

The world is dependent on unhistoric acts, for how we treat each other, for seeing our common traits that unite us rather than focusing on what separates us. For knowing in our very hearts, we are all individuals struggling with something, who just wanted to be needed and find meaning in our own lifes.