Do what makes you happy

At a conference in Washington, DC, I write the following letter to my boyfriend Richard (Richard and I started dating in March):

"I escaped from the meeting, I don’t feel at ease at all. Yes you are right, I must invent new success criteria for myself as those I was offered don’t seem to fit – making lots of money and having lots of responsibilities; I don’t think it is my thing. I don’t fit in "the mold", I don’t feel like it at all. I feel like being some kind of a "prophet" (see the type of ambition!), no but, seriously, this is more how I see myself. I was thinking about my buddy who is a rabbi – actually I think I would have liked this kind of job, spiritual guide… hmm, this is something I should explore. It is time I started a real introspection, without giving too much weight to my education, others’ expectations, etc. That I concentrate on finding what will make me happy.

When I was at MIT, the speakers at my Commencement were… brothers Click and Clack, local celebrities: they have a radio show on NPR where people call about their car problems and they provide solutions – and it is all very funny. They came right after Bill Clinton, Kofi Annan, etc – so it was a bit of a joke. But both Click and Clack happen to be MIT alumni and their speech was incredibly inspirational, and I think now is the time where I need to draw inspiration from it. They told us their story: after MIT, they became engineers, doing like boring routine jobs, then one day one of them had a bad car accident and almost died and he realized that he was wasting his life doing something he didn’t like. He gave his resignation, and so did his brother, and, their passion being auto mechanics, they started a mechanics shop where people would come, use their tools, and learn how to repair their own cars. Then, one thing leading to another, they became the famous radio stars. That is the story of Click and Clack.

And their quite unusual message to the 2,000 MIT graduates and their families that year: find out what makes you happy, and do it, and do it now, while you're young, don’t procrastinate, etc. So, I need to find my mechanics shop, and hopefully I won’t need to go through a near-death experience for that. But I can feel that the corporate world, etc, is not it.

(…) I am not very creative… but I’m good at expressing others’ ideas. I can pretty much explain anything to anyone. My ex-boyfriend was always telling me: "You are a teacher".  Plus I love this: acquire knowledge and diffuse it. What to do now?

(…) "Things" don't matter to me much. I realize we need them and I'm happy to have them (cars, planes, contact lenses, cell phones) but being part of the big machinery that creates and offers and maintains them is not what I believe I should be doing with my life. Am I wrong and do I need a better brainwashing to become more of a productive element in society? Not rare to hear from others when I tell my story that I am just "a little girl who is never satisfied"! But this is untrue I think.

(…) Bizarre time it feels, floating in limbo..... Who do I want to be? What do I want to achieve in my life?"

Comments

[Diana]

Hey, I stumbled across your blog - and I love it. I love it because I see so much of myself in it. Thanks for making me feel just a tad less crazy - and more just like a normal person with a lot of heavy questions to answer.

Cheers,
Diana