With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
But there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself
Where is my mind?
The Pixies
Sometimes I wonder where I would be now had I taken the regular route paved for Singaporeans. Not that I veered off dramatically--O levels, NS, poly, uni--just a shuffle in the education steps. I like to think those were deliberate and free choices, and I broke free from the yoke of the rigid monotone system of exams and streaming only to emerge with a degree to monotonous and repetitive work.
Watching my peers succeed in such a system with cushy jobs that pay for the occassional holiday and expensive toys make it seem worthwhile though. Tyler Durden from the Fight Club must have gotten it wrong:
You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.
There's also the incessant complaints about work. The clueless colleagues, the irrelevance, the need to pretend you're busy when you're not, the list goes on.
Maybe people just like complaining. But what about the need to connect one's work to the greater things in life? This is where we stand on a slippery slope. One may get as much satisfaction from buying a new Xbox with his pay as another from contributing to the alleviation of world hunger. I'm not about to pass judgment on anyone who couldn't care less if their shirts were made in sweatshops. Or maybe the trick is to find the work you love. Hardly anyone I know loves the work he or she does, and even so, the pay is unbearably low.
Choice. I think that's really the crux of the issue here. No use blaming the system. I would've have loved to attend art school (coincidentally like Hitler did) many years ago and be some dandy designer but nonetheless, I'm happy where I am and have been. Especially more so when the conventional is going through ceaseless regurgitation of education I have no interest in and wondering: Where is my mind?
I think where we are today is largely a result, the accumulation of doing what we thought was the best thing to do in all the little moments, which perhaps with hindsight now some might seem like foolish steps, but hey life is about learning, we are already very fortunate compared with the majority of people on this earth. To quote Jobs, Stay foolish, stay hungry.
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