Today’s Drifting Thougtht: Discontent - The Gap In-Between

How many times that I find myself admiring or feeling jealous on someone else? A lot of times, I bet. Being an avid self-help book reader, there’s many times when I feel myself inspired about the rosy pictures of success that these people have painted. There’s a lot of times when I just hope that I were in their place, enjoying the riches, friends and personal enjoyment they derived from what they are doing. And it just feels real as you start to relate yourself to such experiences and it’s hard to not to get infected with such optimism and it feels as if I’m living in feel-good land.

Except the fact that… these feelings weren’t real and not to mention they aren’t my own experience either.

And when I start to read through the detail, it’s pretty evident why it’s extremely easy to feel discontent: there’s always the strong urge of achieving such heights soon, if not right now. Then the fine print in the books starts to show when you least expected: Such heights does not come cheap, it comes with determination, effort and time. There’s always that element of change, which not only affects yourself but also your surroundings (as a reaction towards the change you introduced in the process), which is something that might not be welcomed, either consciously or non-consciously.

Like growing trees, it needs careful cultivation and will require us to take up various inconveniences, lessons (usually the hard way) and patience, as these things tends only to take solid grounds after a period of time, sometimes even decades! And one of the most hardest lessons? The examples and experiences taken straight out from the book is not answers that you can just copy straight away, plug it in some problems in your life and expect it to solve the problem as if it’s capable make the problems to disappear with a loud “poof!” upon yielding it. They may be perfect for the one providing the examples but more likely than not is that they aren’t cookie-cutter perfect for others as there’s many factors that differ from you and the other person writing it. Rather, there’re more like suggestions and references that you will have to adopt in based on your own strengths and the situation you’re in, and in effect coming up with the tweaks, major and minor, in order to implement a solution that works for you.

Once reaching that point, it’s pretty evident that it all takes personal initiative and responsibility in order to change your life completely: self-help books are only a source of inspiration and probably some sort of guidance but ultimately it’s ourselves that is needed to drive our own lives towards where we wanted to be. And I would say it wasn’t for the faint of heart and the timid. Sometimes in order to achieve things, you just have to sacrifice what you have known in order to move towards the world of different possibilities: with many paths that will reach towards different ultimate prizes.

Honestly speaking, 25 years down the road I do have to say that the strong discontent is within me. There’s a lot of times that I have given up, letting go the things too easily upon reaching intimidating barriers… and not to mention that there’s times I’m personally skeptical with the decision that I had made and the things that I chose to cultivate along the way. I believe everyone does have a strong determination, but I think probably mine was a bit… misplaced? (well… but I suppose it’s something extremely subjective and it depends on the degree of seriousness, i.e. was it fixable?)

But I suppose only time will tell whether my choices will lead me to the things that I wanted. And I definitely have to admit that learning the lessons of appreciating life as it is given at times is hard when you felt that they were just not enough to satisfy. You know, many times people tend to wish something for nothing? 😊 Or at least putting in just a little effort in order to gain great fortune. Those kinds of things.

But I suppose it’d be a good idea to go back to reading some good self-help books already, at one point I was completely giving up on them as they tend to give me roller-coaster rides (not the fault of the books, but rather my inflated expectation that the world will be rosy once I put everything into exercise). Only thing I can do is just do whatever I can, hope for the best and expect the very worst, I guess.