run amok

existence

When my dad was a kid, you went to school so you could get a job and work there for 30 years. The older you were, the longer you'd been doing your job, the more experience you had, the more valuable you became. It's not like that anymore. Now you go to school to get into college to get you in the door of a job. Then, you keep learning and training and updating your knowledge because by the time you've been in a job 5 years, most of what you learned in college is obsolete. Now if you do the one job for 30 years you're not experienced, you're useless.

It kind of puts a different slant on the idea of purpose in life. We used to have to figure out our purpose by the age of 18 so you could get that first job & stick with it and be married by 21. Now the average person works in five different fields in their career and gets married much later in life. Five! Work, our jobs, where we spend most of our time, has a lot of bearing on what our daily purpose in life is. So unless we invest significant effort into another purpose we deem important.. well, does our purpose change constantly then? Do we even have one? Now we realise that work isn't our primary focus, there's an entire generation of us that are stuck in an existential crisis.

"Go to school."
What now?
"Go to college"
What now Dad?
"Get a job"
Okay I got one, what now dad?
"..I dont' know, get married or something."

Is that the great answer, our direction in life? It's the answer to that last question that burns in us all late at night. It keeps us from feeling content. But, if you're content you're satisfied with what you have, and if you're satisified you're not chasing anything. And once again, we have no purpose because we have nothing to achieve. Some of the best people I know fall victim to this question. I don't blame them. I think everyone does and they're just the only ones brave enough to admit it.