What's stopping me from giving up?
What's stopping me from throwing out all my books and dropping out of school?
What's stopping me from simply going in to an exam unprepared?
Basically, what's stopping me from just stopping?
My answer to this is hard to pinpoint and I'm going to try my best to explain it.
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***Disclaimer: I quote the Bible, but that doesn't mean I'm trying to convert you to Christianity, like I quote Mahatma Gandhi but that doesn't mean I'm trying to convert you to Hinduism.***
Okay. So I hate school. I hate this life and I hate the constant disappointments of each successive stage of living. From being a kid to being a teenager to being an adult; from being in primary school to being in high school to being in uni to being employed from job to job to job. People the world over hate this. This constant struggle to win this rat race. This idea of chasing after a goal, reaching it, not feeling satisfied, and creating a new goal. It's a never ending cycle. One small mistake and you're in the rat race forever. There's no point looking backwards and yet you still do. You mellow on everything you did wrong in your life. You look forward and you see nothing. You look upwards and you see people sitting on thrones around you; they escaped this rat race. And they probably never worked a day in their life.
You want that.
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Let me tell you a bit about stress. Bad stress (not the good stress that motivates people to achieve).
Stress devours you. It chases you down the rat race, into little crevices of unproductivity or forces you to turn into pathways that do nothing but detour your route to success (if it doesn't actually send you off-course from success already).
Stress comes in all forms in all ways. For some, it's small bursts of stress that, over time, accumulate to a big stress monster. For others, it is suppressed until one day, something snaps, causing the stress monster to unleash itself. And for still others, it's always there in the background. And you don't even know it.
Stress kills you in many ways. Tiredness, insomnia, headaches, bodily malfunctions, mood swings and memory loss are just some of the side effects of stress. It varies with everyone.
So that's stress.
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Back on topic now. I've always found school useless. School doesn't teach you much except how to cheat the system. School doesn't teach you how to live. School is a cage. I reckon if you took someone who has been living on the streets for the past few years then they would be a better person than me. And when I say better I mean smarter, more realistic and with a deeper sense of meaning to their lives. And sure, they might be unhappy, but so is everyone else.
So school is pretty much useless.
So we've established what stress is and we've established what school is. Let's link the two.
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At the end of Year 11, I had a sudden increase of stress. I'm sure everyone else did when they moved into Year 12. My bowel movements were retarded (in the sense that they were being both stupid and slow), and whilst it wasn't quite diarrhoea, the easiest way to describe it is diarrhoea. That happened for about 2 weeks. I didn't even realise I was that stressed (it had nothing to do with the food I ate). That came back during the beginning of this year I think (or end of last year; year 12 is a big blur for me even though only half of it has happened). I was getting very little sleep no matter how hard I tried and I was crying over the smallest things (I still am). Today is the 12th day in a row that I have had a headache.
This all comes from stress.
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I never really knew what I wanted to do in life. When I was young I wanted to be a doctor simply because all my cousins did either law or medicine and my dad was pushing me and my brother to be doctors. I didn't want to be a doctor because I wanted to be a doctor, but because it seemed like the only option available to me.
It was only recently (a few years ago) I thought of doing something food related. But I still was unsure. Then maybe like last year or so I decided I wanted to own my own cafe or catering business. I'm leaning towards catering.
I don't need the good marks, I don't need the high ATAR and yet I still stress over school. Why? I still don't know.
But how am I surviving this?
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At the beginning of this year Soul Purpose was doing something different. Each leader was going to address a certain topic. Mine was, fittingly enough, "The Purpose of Life".
I had no idea even of my own purpose in life, how was I supposed to address this? Where do I begin?
Now, there's a chapter in the bible that is the go-to when it comes to this topic. Ecclesiastes. I hadn't read it yet, but when I did, my gosh it spoke right to me:
Everything is Meaningless
1 The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”
3 What do people gain from all their labors
at which they toil under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
7 All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.
8 All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
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.
-Ecclesiastes 1:1-11
17 So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. 18 I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. 19 And who knows whether that person will be wise or foolish? Yet they will have control over all the fruit of my toil into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless. 20 So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. 21 For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. 22 What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun? 23 All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless.
-Ecclesiastes 2:17-23
-Ecclesiastes 2:17-23
Everything on this earth is meaningless! Sure it's quite a pessimistic take on life (and don't worry, it gets better later on in the chapter), but that's exactly how I felt!
What am I doing in school? Why don't I just give up now? Nothing really matters.
In a way, this sort of thinking both made me want to give up, and made me feel stronger than ever that I shouldn't.
I told you, it's very hard to pinpoint how I feel.
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Today I had an epiphany. I knew it all before, but today I just knew it. If that makes sense (but it probably doesn't).
What made me hate year 12?
The fact that this won't matter in one year.
What's getting me through year 12?
The fact that this won't matter in one year.
The fact that this is over in less than six months.
Less than six months! That's less than half a year.
In less than six months, sure I will still be worrying about my marks, but the reality is that I would not be able to do anything about them.
In one year, my ATAR won't even matter.
In one year, high school will be gone.
In five years, uni will be gone.
In eighty or so years, my life may be gone.
In one hundred years, my life will be gone.
And yet life will still continue.
And life will continue to be meaningless.
Think of the average life span. Around eighty years. Now think of the span of life. All life. The earth's life. The universe's life. Think of eternity.
Nothing matters in our lives. Everything is just so insignificant. We live and then we die and that's it. Fifty years after you die, unless you are famous, people won't talk about you. That's just a sad fact and we need to accept that.
I know it's quite pessimistic, but this train of thought has actually helped me to get motivated and helped me to continue going to school and working and eating and studying. It has helped me to continue living.
"A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes."
"Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well."
-Mahatma Gandhi
"Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well."
-Mahatma Gandhi
Okay. So let's get this thought of life being meaningless and turn it into something optimistic.
I live life now because it is meaningless. It is meaningless and nothing I can do can change it. It will pass away. Everything will pass away.
24 A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, 25 for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? 26 To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
-Ecclesiastes 2:24-26
-Ecclesiastes 2:24-26
Since everything in life is meaningless, and since this will all end soon, why not just go through it?
We don't really have a choice anyway.
School is meaningless.
Year 12 is meaningless.
Getting an ATAR is meaningless.
Life is meaningless.
So let's try our best, but not try too hard.
Let's live life joyfully.
Your heartache will pass eventually.
You just have to go through it.
Just go through the rat race.
Look forward.
You might not be able to see anything, but just know that there is something waiting for you at the end. There is freedom.
And that's what's stopping me from stopping.
