Quirkbag Collection #23 – 19.12.25
If you look at your life hard enough, it fits into a typical template. Sometimes, it’s a depressing one, and you can’t help but wonder: is this the rest of my life? Depending on the environment in which you grew up, it differs for every person. Mine is: Primary School, Secondary School, Junior College, National Service, University, Work, Retire, Die.
Sound familiar? Oversimplified, sure. Accurate, almost eerily so.
I think too much like a grumpy old man for a 20 year old. I frequently ruminate about the purpose and trajectory of my life – and if I’m feeling really introspective – those of others’ lives too. As a habit, I picture their lives, jobs, personalities 10 years down the road and assign them to a particular ‘template’ of a person that I’d see on the street today – a corporate worker, a sales assistant, an insurance agent…
Though, if you’re struggling with finding that mythical ‘purpose’ or ‘meaning’ in life, check out this interview.
Introducing The Life Template
For some of us, our lives are ‘laid out’ paths. It’s like a life template for new humans (us, obviously) that gets passed down from parents and schools. They segment our lives so that the only goal is to progress from one stage to the next in a very telic-driven process, for the rest of our lives until we “finish” life. It becomes scarily easy to drift through life’s stages.
Be it law school, med school, Harvard, Oxford or any other conventionally perceived ‘success’ routes are examples of the life templates. Having only these goalposts as a teenager without understanding life’s possibilities can do more harm than good. (Although, conventional wisdom also states that parents and schools work toward the betterment of children, in theory if not in effect.)
Indeed, a sharp, clear goal with unwavering faith that ‘you must make it’ or ‘you have worked your life for it’ can push you over almost any obstacle. But a narrow tunnel vision for a 17 year-old whose whole self-worth and self-esteem ride on whether that goal turns into reality proves greatly risky. Failure to hit those goals can end terribly. Afterall, the life template does not usually include contingencies.
So what of the advice that we should only focus on ONE thing? If that ONE thing happens to be studying or following a certain life template without understanding why, it’s probably a case of misapplication. The advice serves to eliminate noise and not isolate your ability to explore life. And hence, upon setting your sights on something deemed worthy of pursuit despite the opportunity costs, in which you believe with deep conviction, the time is ripe for purely focusing on that ONE thing.
That said, the education system and social circumstances can make that realisation and understanding hard to obtain.
The Fastest 80 000 Hours
‘Work’ takes up the bulk of our lives, with an average calculated figure of 80 000 hours. Ironically, it’s the part that gets skipped over the fastest and most of it ends in a blur for most adults. As I fast forward through this ‘template’ of life, I see the well-trodden future which revolves around an office-bound job that sucks the life out of me. (I have not yet heard an office-bound worker passionately share his joy for the job.)
At the end of it all, the blur of ‘work’ would be the fastest 80 000 hours of your life.
For those who secretly crave more than a working life spent behind a desk and in meeting rooms, surely the question you ask after seeing your potential future would be: is this the rest of my life?
Is there an invisible force that simply pushes people further down into their life templates?
Did we relinquish control over our lives? Without even knowing?
Call me young and stupid, but I stubbornly refuse to believe that this is all there is for us – a subpar life template. And so, it begs the question: Is this the rest of my life?
Having to spend 80 000 hours doing ONE thing that you hate and calling it a ‘career’ is a tough choice, but one you are totally free to make. But perhaps you are fooled by the life template. You can, in fact, do other things in 80 000 hours beyond the miserable job, if you so decide.
Going Beyond The Education System
Perhaps this is where my education system has failed me. I was not taught imagination. I discovered it after graduation. Conventional advice to ‘explore your interests’ and ‘pursue your interests’ are as useful as the bird chirping downstairs. The real intention, however, holds some value.
It is less about ‘interests’ than it is about your ability to go beyond the education system to learn about yourself and this world. And in supposedly ‘exploring your interests’, well-intentioned relatives and educators hope you experience some Eureka moment for your life’s trajectory.
Consider a fictional dude: Tom, 19, is on track to being a corporate mid-level manager, 35, overseeing ‘internal operations developmental projects’ in his stable, but boring and dry job. That might be his entire work life.
Is this a bad outcome? Maybe that’s a poor question.
A better question might be: Is that a life he deems worthy of pursuing?
Of course, everyone is entitled to ‘live their own lives’. But, that line does little to explain the average worker’s misery about the job. And while no rule mandates enjoyment at work, I would prefer 80 000 hours of average positive emotions over negative ones.
Whether a job to you is for money or for fulfillment, you are the only one that decides if it is worthy of your pursuit. Plenty of individual reasons exist to justify holding the jobs we do. Tom might choose his lifelong office job for the money and stability because he prefers the comfort. But the rest of us (not-Tom real humans) must not fall into the trap of believing that Tom’s life is meant for us.
We must think beyond the education system.
Find Your Own Life
As a student, I have been encouraged by the system to think more deeply. And perhaps I have manually brought that to overdrive. Thinking deeply can easily lead to overthinking and a sense of overwhelm without a tether to keep you grounded.
Deep thinking has its perks. You begin to piece together the puzzle that is your life and this world; to find your own life beyond ‘school’ or ‘friends’ or ‘sports’ and see who you really are.
Oh, and you’ll never find it easier to have a conversation with yourself confronting your life choices.
Conventional advice is not wrong. Neither is pineapple on pizza, or having cake for breakfast. It all depends on what you have decided to believe, and sometimes, that belief was ingrained in you from young. In that case, it might not even be your belief; it is your environment’s.
We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question.
– Orson Scott Card, Speaker For The Dead
Your future life doesn’t have to be exactly like what you were told in the past.
The ‘good job’ and the life you will have can be entirely separate from the picture school paints. But school does not teach you that. And that’s my realisation as I turned 19 after graduation from Junior College. It has since sparked my curiosity to think about my life template.
The education system taught me to think about my work, but rarely emphasized the bigger picture. To you, who may be like my younger self: DON’T settle for the life template because you have not explored life, or because that’s what you’ve been told. Go and find your own life.
There is more, at least I hope there continues to be, to the future life than a measly life template.
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