Am I too kind?
Tomorrow is my convocation day. I have been looking forward to this day because it is a day to celebrate the days in uni, and to recap memories of times spent in school with my friends. I was still feeling quite happy after completion of my honours project. However, reality is now starting to present itself in the form of job-hunting stress, and the fact that people are talking about nothing but work and money. The worst thing is that many people no longer seek jobs of their interest, but rather, jobs that pay well. I cannot deny that money is important, but I feel very suffocated by the kind of life in which balance between money and meaning is upset. I have friends who go for jobs which paid very well, but which they didn’t like at all. I can never understand how they manage to live with that. Some quit just after a while, because they finally realized that they couldn’t take the misery.
My state of mind is already clouded with gloom at the state of society today. It took a turn for the worse when I realized that somebody close to me talks about money and jobs in 95% of our conversations. When we were still studying, I had to put up with the fact that he kept talking about grades and future job prospects. And I thought that I just had to put up with it till graduation. But now, he keeps talking about money and jobs, which really drove me to my wits’ end. His smses are about job interviews, his phone conversations are about job prospects and salary. When he wanted to meet me, I was feeling a bit consoled that he still has a life, but not after he told me that he had job issues to ‘discuss’ with me. Suddenly I felt like I was his business partner rather than a friend. He talks about the same things even during gatherings. In summary, the topics on his agenda belong only to 3 categories - Money & work, racism & fish. How sad. I thought I had no life, but seems that there a alot worse than me. At least I still talk about a bit of everything in general.
I wonder if this is my karma. It seems to get worse as I get older, and I don’t know why. Maybe my character draws people who take me for granted. When I tolerate their nonsense, they think that it is ok to do things which irritate me, until I lash out at them, and it doesn’t just end there. After sometime, they would forget about this issue and do the same things to upset me again. I think that insensitive people have no excuse to say that they can repeat the same mistakes because they have an inability to recognize situations. They must make an effort to learn!! I sometimes hate myself for not being able to make firm decisions in getting these people out of my life. I tolerate it when people irritate me, and hide my displeasure from others by secretly chiding these people who irritated me, but in the end they declared aloud to everyone about me scolding them, without thinking whether they deserved to be scolded in the first place. It just doesn’t pay to be kind. Good relationships foster a healthy state of mind, and suddenly everything in your life becomes positive. I feel that I am plagued by bad relationships, including that in my family, and I sense that these things are causing a lack of motivation and hope for things in life. Of cos, being the non-communicative kind of family, my parents never liked to talk much. Even when they discuss about their children’s issues, there are many things in which they cannot accept our views, and so it becomes a dead end - in return, we would almost never tell them anything about what we do.
I feel most at home when I am with my buddy, bcos she experienced many similar things in life as me. We can only accept our parents bcos they are after all, our parents who have raised us. We have experienced toxic relationships, and we have only each other to share these problems. In a way we are always ‘role-playing’ in front of our parents, while dealing with these issues behind them, coupled with the stress in work and thinking about our futures. People who have it easier do not understand the situation we are in, and they might just think that we are very unfilial to think of our parents in this light. I would like to say that I am already being very filial to my parents, bcos for everything I do, I know I should not make them angry, and bcos there are so many things which bog me down, I have become so tired that my solution is to just agree with everything they say, and keep all the anger or frustration to myself. We can’t force a thinking on ourselves, right?
That is about just as far as I would go to tolerate people though. If not, I would be living my life for other people. Deep down, I am really unhappy, and helpless. As I am writing this, I feel a weight on my chest, which cannot seem to be lifted. I have this thinking that even if you had spent time for a relationship, these efforts are just going to be futile because you had never bothered to solve underlying problems. As for myself, I just wish some sage can enlighten me now.
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:01 pm
Hey sister, dun despair..u are not the only one. Cos I oso facing similar problems with you in family n life. I guess you will jus have to think of what u want for urself in future. If things aren’t working out now, it wun happen for u in future. Cos these pple have already taken things for granted n they will jus asked y have u changed overnight instead, and not appreciate ur kindness. Guess my advice for u will be to see urself in the next 5 years in life what u want. As a fren have told me before, there are 3 kinds of pple you cannot choose, your parents, your siblings, and your relatives. Since u r born with the family, u got to learn to live with it. As for other aspects, like frens n relationship, u do have a choice. Give urself tis time to think over what has happened in ur life so far whether is tat what u want or not. If yes, u gotta live with it. If no, then u can make ur own changes in life for betta cos life is short. Be happy n cherish every moment!!! ^_^