In Pursuit of Pleasure
Hedonism.It is the gratification of all one's sensual desires--in the absence of pain--that can best be attained through the rational control of one's desires.
For the past several months, I’ve been viewing life from a hedonistic standpoint. During the weekdays, I follow a set routine: go to work, do my thing, go home, then work on studying, resume writing, etc. During this time, I often catch myself thinking about what I’ll be doing on Friday night or during the weekend. Salsa dancing, reading (politics/current events), hiking, model-building, and now snowboarding…doing those things seem to take precedence over what I do as a professional. Can this be a good thing? A part of my development as an increasingly well-rounded human being? Or will this lead down a dead end?
My life has been so formulaic since middle school. Take these classes to get into these classes in high school. Then in high school it was all about taking certain classes to get into a good college. Then in college it was ROTC telling me to take certain classes and complete them within a particular time frame so that you commission by date X. Heh, heh. Even now, the military tells its young officers to achieve certain things by certain points in their careers so that they can get promoted to X rank by the Yth year of service. Ugh. You know what? Enough.
I’d like to think that I was put on this earth to do more than follow a prescribed series of steps to get somewhere at some time to live a good life. That time should be now. I’ve followed the formula in the preceding paragraph and am now a commissioned officer; I honestly don’t see my life getting better if I continue down that route! LoL! Instead, I see myself getting increasingly embedded in “the formula.” At this point, I’d like to settle for a job that I can tolerate and do the things I really enjoy doing outside of that job.
On the flip side, sometimes I wonder if my current train of thought is too puerile—you know, childish. As an adult, shouldn’t I always be ambitious and go-getting? Society smiles on that sort of stuff, doesn’t it? I dunno…I just want to live life without having to worry about dumb things.
I figure that I must really hate my job to even be thinking this way. But it just feels so weird to actually want to improve at things that are not pre-requisites for further goals, but are simply things that I want to achieve purely for the sake of self-actualization (I hope that’s the correct term). It’d be nice to be one of those rare individuals that loves what they do for a living. So for me, I guess I’d have to be a political analyst with a love for the outdoors that builds and sells toy models and also gives salsa dance lessons for additional income.
Not happening. Ah well. ‘Till next Friday, then.
posted by anthony fuego @ 10:57 PM
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