Life Path Dissatisfaction

Everybody has fears, especially fears about the future. The enigmatic future can give people a sense of uncertainty when thought about. These fears include a multitude of things that can range from sickness, like cancer or heart disease to financial loss, perhaps in a stock market crash. However, there is an especially great fear that many people have. Whether or not one has gone down the right path in life is and will continue to be one of the greatest fears of many people in our world.

Arguably, this the largest fear out there. On the top of many “life’s greatest regrets” lists are words along the lines of “I should have quit my unpromising job and pursued my dream job. People, teenagers especially, always wonder whether they will choose or have chosen the right path in life, and if they could have done something better or more fulfilling.

In the short film “SloMo,” a man named John Kitchin decides to depart from his career as a neurologist to pursue absolutely nothing. He talked about how he felt that his career had changed from “90 percent spiritual and 10 percent financial” to 10 percent spiritual and 90 percent financial.” As a result, he choose to spend the rest of his days at the beach, skating down the beach walk for miles upon miles every day. Surpisingly, it was extremely fulfilling to him, and he continues to do so to this day.

Mr. SloMo In action

Kitchin shows us that it is absolutely never too late to change one’s path in life. When he decided to change his life path, his vision had been deteriorating and he was growing older. This gives others little room for an exuse to not change their life path.

SloMo made a drastic change past the latter half of his life. There’s no reason others can’t do the same

Release

With the end of every finals season comes happiness. That happiness is usually stemmed in the fact that a student will have a fresh start or “clean slate” at the beginning of the new semester. But this time around, at the end of the seventh semester of my high school career, there’s another aspect contributing to that usual bout of happiness. And that aspect is closure. With the end of the seventh semester of my high school career comes the end of the three-school-year-and-a-semester struggle of “making the grade.”

Of course, I’ll have to maintain decent grades. But the 8th semester involves much less of a concern to do so. And although it currently seems like I’m saying I no longer need to try, that absolutely isn’t the case. What this means is that I can focus on the learning aspect instead of the grade aspect.

Although it’s a three day, stress free hiatus. I’m honestly rather excited for this weekend to pass.

Howard

“To Be” Is Sort Of Not An Option

“To be, or not to be? That is the question”

Many know that this is the scene where Prince Hamlet contemplates suicide. In one of the most widely known asides in the history of English Literature, our friend Hamlet talks about a permanent sleep would end all the troubles that life comes with—”the heartache and the thousand natural shocks.”

There’s one issue with these famous lines, however. Whether one chooses “to be” or “not to be,” he is never “to be” indefinitely. And there lies the the icky thing we call death.

I think it’s good that most young adults don’t quite realize their mortality. It pushes them to do things they wouldn’t do otherwise. Due to a number of deaths that have occurred around me within the past few years and the imminent death of a family member, I’m one of those unfortunate younger souls who have realized that death exists.

As a relatively non-religious person, I don’t really go anywhere after death regarding my soul. My soul will simply disappear, my consciousness will cease to exist in the minutes following my time of death. Then my poor, poor body, goes into preservation for a while, emerges, get’s it’s makeup done, attends it’s funeral, and is promptly buried six feet under. Insects will gnaw into my coffin, eventually reaching a point where they can decompose what remains of me.

For those who are religious, they have something ahead of them, whether it’s rebirth, Heaven, Nirvana, etc… But nothing really awaits an atheist following death—just worms and bacteria. So there doesn’t seem to be any solace in death—just disappointment.

I know. There are atheists out there who are content with the concept with death, and that’s because they have a purpose in life and perhaps a legacy to leave behind—two things that I lack.

Hamlet, whether religious or not, was content when he was dying. The truth had been uncovered about Claudius, and he had Horatio to tell people of his story. I’m still seeking that.