For the last 2 hours, I have been trying to recall a time when "work was not everything to me". A time when I spoke of things other than work, colleagues and episodes related to work. A time when I spoke of my children, of my house / my home, of what I read, watched and discussed. Apparently, there was a time that I did go through all that. A time when I was "contented". And the timeline was actually defined to me. Yet... I cannot recall any of it.
From my period of "contentment" I can only recall the arguments, the breaking of doors, the yelling, shouting, smashing of the mirror in the hallway and finally the walk-away. From my period of "contentment" I can only recall the discussions of how everything was burning to the ground, and not of the dream-building.
Often, and most particularly lately, I have been wondering what my raison d'être is. I have been lost and adrift since leaving my last employment cos work, to me, was what defines me. I often think that the only aspect of life where I have been par excellence is the aspect of my career. I have failed in almost every other aspect of my life except for my work, that I cling to it like a sailor, clinging to a piece of driftwood in a stormy sea.
It now makes absolute sense to me as to why I have been resentful of this lack of activity at work, lack of need for me to exercise my brain. If my work defines me, then this lack of work translates to me amounting to nothing. This idée fixe has been my greatest fear - that I amount to nothing, and no one. And I have not been able to move on, particularly to the new job, even though I know that great things await me in time to come.
Monday told me within our second conversation that I was fearful. I laughed in his face and my soi-disant instead was that I am someone who knew what I wanted and merely vocal about stating it as fact. I guess I really am transparent. But my friends around me, have grown so accustomed to my "dust-bunny" routine that they no longer state the obvious. And truly, only a stranger would dare to say something like that to my face.
Yet once in a while, one of my friends would catch me by the wrist and lay it to me straight in my face. Someone who is able to see through the sang-froid and get thru my own thoughts to ME. And someone did just that today. I'm not sure if it was a conscious effort on her part but she did have the authority and credibility to do the deed today.
Her words of wisdom includes
- No one likes to fail but it doesn't help to start out with negativity
- Reminisce about the past, but you've gone way past that time and mark
- There's more to YOU than the work you did in the past
- Someone will come along and make you accept all the things that irritate you
I am not "found" yet. It takes more than one conversation (okay, maybe more than one) to turn me around. But at least, I think I am not so lost either. I will come round to it, soon-ish.
Acceptance will come by some tour de force. And it would be some force of strength on my part for sure, to find that au contraire to what I have perceived to be my only achievement in life, there have been and would be many others as well in time to come.
For the past is gone and nothing can be done about it but to accept, forgive and forget. The future is still waiting to be painted and, if it is in my hands, then it is my carte blanche to determine the shape with which it is to come out.
... If I want to send my kids to a better school, it is for me to determine how my new business contract works out in 2010.
... If I want to be a leader and not a worker, then I must cross the risk boundary that I have caged myself in and pull my thoughts together to better use.
... If I want "contentment" then I have to take the first step in reversing that which started out on the wrong foot.
All the above scares the living daylights out of me. I shudder internally even as I commit thoughts to words. But it is comme il faut.
They say that life shapes you, how you think, makes you who you are. They also say, you assimilate the good and you learn from the bad. Learn so that you do not make the same mistake that others or yourself have made before. It suddenly appears to me, that I have been so focused on the latter that I have foregone all other experiences that are there to teach me. And this is not a way to attain joie de vivre.
It has been a highly productive evening, a thoroughly enjoyable and well-spent one with my best girl, Mandy along the corridors of Suria KLCC.
Author's Note:
This lodgement is laced with French terminologies simply because I have been reading books written originally in the language. And instead of letting the beauty I find in those words go to waste in my head, it is now here for your reading pleasure as well. I hope it helped somewhat in giving my thoughts the depth which I sought.
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