TW: may result in an existential crisis. whether that's a good or bad thing is up to you to decide.
The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
- Mark Twain
The journey of finding, or creating, yourself is different for everyone, but here we've created a compilation of general resources that you may interpret as you wish in order to fulfill whatever you feel you're missing right now. Especially throughout the COVID quarantine, many of us have suffered from burnout, a lack of motivation or will, and an overwhelming sense of being lost. Thankfully, some of us have also found or created ourselves in that time, but even if you identify yourself with the latter, there's always more to learn and more, or new, things to balance in your life.
1. Understanding what you want out of life starts with understanding yourself. Just through living, you know more about yourself than anybody else ever will, but certain things can be helpful in detailing and spelling out exactly what you know about yourself, even if you don't know you know it yet. That's what the Myers-Briggs personality test does- literally spells out your personality, using 4 letters. You can take the test here, and after doing so I strongly recommend reading the details about your personality type and then writing down what you can relate to and how you can connect certain of the things to your life or past experiences.
2. Next is understanding why finding a purpose matters. For this, I have a book recommendation and a poem.
Book recommendation:
Man’s Search for Meaning
This book's author is Viktor E. Frankl, a psychologist and nazi-camp survivor. He was about 25 when he entered the camps, and he already had an education in psychology, which makes it a very interesting book because the first part is mainly his experiences and observations in the camps, and the second is how he views and explains them psychologically. These experiences led him to find a singular reason for why people live; not the search for physical resources or power as some philosophers believe, but the search for meaning. He quotes Nietzsche in saying
"He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how".
In other words, a purpose can help you through the tough times and come out of them stronger so that during the good times, you can keep working towards it.
There's also another quote I really like from his book, but I'm going to break it up:
"What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us." (Frankl 76)
Our attitude changes everything. If you believe something in life is absolutely crappy, you don't think that life has anything to offer to you, and you have forgotten any possible reason there may be to continue living, you're wrong. None of those things are true; they are just one way of looking at the facts. Find other ways, other perspectives, other attitudes that you could take in order to create the meaning you're looking for; for example, as Frankl suggests, look for what you can give to life and to the people around you instead of what you can take from it.
What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain.
- Maya Angelou
"We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life- daily and hourly." (Frankl 76)
Meanings change. I don't believe anyone ever has just 1 meaning- often, you have multiple meanings at a change, and they are constantly changing. So stop thinking of the meaning of life as just one thing, and looking at the smaller picture. What do you require from yourself, and what does the world require from you, at this moment? This week? This month? Baby steps are the only way you will come to understand the big picture in a way that is applicable to your life.
"Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct." (Frankl 76)
Once you have figured these things out, take action. What does it mean if you know something but don't do anything about it? Once you figure out or create some of your purposes, take steps to fulfill them in both the short and long term. This is where the 3rd section of this blog post comes in.
Poem:
“The garden is one of the two great metaphors for humanity.
The garden is about life and beauty and the impermanence of all living things.
The garden is about feeding your children, providing food for the tribe.
It’s part of an urgent territorial drive that we can probably trace back to animals storing food.
It’s a competitive display mechanism, like having a prize bull, this greed for the best tomatoes and English tea roses.
It’s about winning; about providing society with superior things; and about proving that you are tasteful, have good values, and work hard.
And what a wonderful relief, every so often, to know who the enemy is.
Because in the garden, the enemy is everything: the aphids, the weather, time.
And so you pour yourself into it, care so much, and see up close so much birth, and growth, and beauty, and danger, and triumph.
And then everything dies anyway, right?
But you just keep doing it.”
― Anne Lamott, Goodreads
Every single person will interpret this poem and relate it to their own lives differently. However, the last two lines were the ones that stuck out the most to me; why should we keep working, and trying, and being nice, and doing good things, if we're all going to die anyway? That's where the purpose comes in, and that's why we need to create that purpose and figure out how to apply it to our life.
3. What does the real-life application of purposes look like?
Below, there are two pictures/diagrams that can help you figure out what your life balance can look like, which takes into consideration your meanings, but is also realistic and incorporates your passions and talents.
We suggest that you draw these out and write down what the categories look like for you. Especially for visual learners, this can be super helpful.
This diagram is meant to portray the concept of "Ikigai". Traditionally, this concept doesn't include the "paid for" section, but in order to be realistic and truly helpful, this section has been added. This can help you think more deeply about each category, because questions such as "what does the world need" and especially questions like "how does this combine with what you love or what you can be paid for" are not asked, or answered, very often. Obviously, there are many different possible paths for each person, but this diagram can help narrow that down and is a helpful prompt for figuring out what kind of major, career, or field you'd like to go into.
Lastly, pictured above is what we call the "career octopus", which serves mainly to flesh out our priorities. Try to make a list of what things are important to you in each category. If you happen to be unhappy in your job, field of education, school, etc, then figure out which category is being neglected and find a way to give it more weight in your day-to-day tasks. Let's give an example: say you identify with they/them pronouns, and you are in a field that you are passionate about, like computer science. But your workplace is comprised mainly of people who don't respect your pronouns and continue misgendering (not using correct pronouns) and dead-naming (not using their correct name, if a trans person changed it) you. This would be hugely contradicting to the "personal" and "moral" aspects of the octopus, and therefore your unhappiness at the job may be caused by that. Something to be done about that could possibly be having a civil discussion with your co-workers, reporting them to higher-ups if that didn't work, and if even that doesn't change anything then looking for other job opportunities that would respect your identity and still fulfill your passion for computer science.
Access to these resources regarding self-discovery is only the first step on your journey to creating, not just finding, yourself. Unfortunately, although we can help guide and support you through the rest, the next steps are entirely up to you. How will you better observe and analyze your life to continue learning about and understanding yourself? What actions will you take as a result of your newfound understanding of the meanings of life? How will you take these actions in a bold yet balanced way in order to create a sense of self-fulfillment in your life and career path? We wish you the best of luck in finding the answers, because nobody else can do it for you.
If you'd like to print out this info packet, the easiest way is to print this google doc! FYI: It doesn't have all the links and related info that are on the online versions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OYUFO6wWcLzr7wfnynsLaKff46y0Nf12e6vLhk-2_ik/edit
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