I have no idea what I’m doing
I guess I’m not the only one nor would I be the last. To me it seems interesting that everyone at some point have this experience in their life but no one talks about it and no one knows what to do.
For most people, including me, our goal in life first and foremost is survival. Food, shelter, and clothing. The classic. But once we have those our minds immediately went into scrambles trying to find things to distract us.
I installed a utility called ActivityWatch months ago. It tracks what software I use daily on my computer and my phone. On average I spent more than six hours a day on both device. I’m sure people my age also does the same. I used to think that my content consumption is better than most because I don’t use TikTok and the like, but apparently there is no difference. If you spend six hours a day on something you don’t actually intend to regardless of what it is, you are wasting your life.
Seneca wrote in Chapter 2 in an essay titled On the Shortness of Life" the following:
(2) Many are kept busy either striving after other people’s wealth or complaining about their own. Many who have no consistent goal in life are thrown from one new design to another by a fickleness that is shifting, never settled and ever dissatisfied with itself. Some have no goal at all toward which to steer their course, but death takes them by surprise as they gape and yawn.
Let’s do the math, six hours is 30 a week and at least 120 a month. That’s 1440 hours a year or roughly two months. I wasted two months a year watching YouTube. I wasted two months a year staring at a screen. I hope I’m not the only one doing this.
I’m highly incompetent
When I was in high school I would never expect that I would end up where I am today. I was well aware of my incompetence yet I would have expected much more “progress” by now.
We all have our own dreams and goals. For some it is money, others status and fame. For many more it’s as simple as being happy, being productive during the day, learning a new skill etc. This is even more true for young people especially that they are thrown into a job market that rigorously select for competence. They expect those who are looking for jobs as socially adept, highly intelligent, young, attractive and skilled in their trade.
I don’t know what my goals are. I have a list of them of course. Yet I don’t know if the items on the list are my own, or because society made me write them. Do you seriously want to be a doctor or is it because your parents told you to? Do you want to be a software engineer or is it because it pays the bills? I don’t know about you but I picked my major because it was the easiest to get into. My grades don’t have to be good nor do I have to study. We all pay the price at the end, we reap what we sow so to speak. I wonder what I will get.
Earlier this year, for the first time in my life, I have no idea what I’m doing. It’s like I’m acting out a script for a theater play. It’s like I’m “forced” into this role that I did not choose yet it had been influenced by my actions.
For now, I got no skills. I have nothing on my name. The most likely outcome is I’ll earn less than twice the minimum wage within two years of graduating.
2023 has taught me one thing: mother nature is a fucking bitch. It will continue to throw problems at you, it doesn’t care about your status both mental or physical, and it can take everything you have in an instant. Survival of the fittest is real. Everything you take for granted will be missed when you lose them. All of the current luxuries you possess will not last. There is a one hundred percent chance you will get sick in the future, someone you love will die, and some misfortune befell you at school or work.
I don’t want to grow old. I don’t want more responsibilities. But I can’t exactly stay where I’m at forever either.
Remnants of the pandemic
I spoke with a Korean woman this year. Had a few calls through Discord. She spoke about trying to get a job in the States. I was just glad to had the opportunity to speak Korean. To this day I have no idea why I managed to get this far into the language.
Anyhow I talked to her about my life so did her. She lived in Busan. Big city. At the south of the peninsula and not far from Pohang, another port city, which was my initial interest because the steel company POSCO started from there.
The company is a really interesting story, one that I think fit the theme here. It broke ground in the early 70s led by a government that forced an export driven economy. Almost a decade has passed since then president Park coup. He was a very interesting man. The cold war was at its height, the Vietnam war was all the press talked about. Surrounded by communists on all sides and his country’s former colonizer, he had to build a strong military foundation and wealth if his republic were to stand well beyond his death.
And stand they did.
They didn’t know whether what they were doing back then would succeed or not. In just three decades, it would thrust itself onto the new millennium with one of the fastest rise of wealth and level of industrialization at a rate that was unmatched by any nation at the time. That is, until China did the exact same thing right after.
Those were the things I think about every day during the pandemic. Could I do that? Could I be rich? Could I get good and have skills while making tons of money at the same time?
I had so much time back then. Life was fun. It was heaven on earth.
Nothing is new under the sun
One of the last good emperors of the roman empire, Marcus Aurelius, wrote in Meditations in Book 2 : 14
Even if you’re going to live three thousand more years, or ten times that, remember: you cannot lose another life than the one you’re living now, or live another one than the one you’re losing. The longest amounts to the same as the shortest. The present is the same for everyone; its loss is the same for everyone; and it should be clear that a brief instant is all that is lost. For you can’t lose either the past or the future; how could you lose what you don’t have?
Remember two things:
i. that everything has always been the same, and keeps recurring, and it makes no difference whether you see the same things recur in a hundred years or two hundred, or in an infinite period;
ii. that the longest-lived and those who will die soonest lose the same thing. The present is all that they can give up, since that is all you have, and what you do not have, you cannot lose.
As do the book of Ecclesiastes 1 : 9-11
9 What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.
11 No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.
I am not special. I am not the first young adult being forced to question reality itself and being unsure of their future. For most people everything will be okay. I like how Ben Shapiro puts it, and I paraphrase, “You want to not be poor? Finish high school, don’t go to jail, don’t do drugs, and don’t have kids before marriage.” I think that is true even in developing countries. But I keep wondering,
Is this it? Is this my life now?
Am I to marry someone now? Where’s the money from? Am I to buy a car and get a house? Where’s the money from? How in the world am I supposed to do that with my salary? lmao (actually sobbing)
You can’t believe how common a statement like the above is uttered by young Indonesians like me on Quora, on Reddit like r/indonesia, r/finansial, etc. And of course no one has the answer. At least not a one-size-fits-all answer.
I’m 20 now. I don’t know what to do. But I guess it’s normal for someone this age. Or perhaps not. Who knows. I don’t know how long I’ll live. But I guess we’re in this together so I’m not alone. It makes me happy that we all suffer like this at one point or another. They say life is a disease with a 100% mortality rate. Something like that. We’re all just very good at pretending everything is going all right.
Do you think old people knows everything or they’re just as confused as we do? Maybe they’re only better at hiding it? Maybe ignorance itself is the point of life, imagine how boring it would be to know everything and have everything you sought for come into fruition. Maybe everything will turn out fine and I’ll have three kids and I live at a nice beach resort in Malibu. I don’t know.