One of John Mayer’s interesting quotes is that life is
like a box of crayons…. He goes further and states that most people are like the
8-color boxes, but what we should be really looking for are the 64-color boxes
with the sharpeners on the back…. He obviously fancies himself to be a 64-color
box, though he admits he has a few missing…
I have been mulling over the last few weeks of this little
concept called work-life balance! It is in that spirt that I happily dragged a
few friends for a rather interesting and different talk at the All Saints Cathedral
one evening after work early last week! The subject of the discussion is an
article for another day but one speaker really struck a chord with me…Her presentation
was on life and its little boxes that society and perhaps our own selves are so
driven and pressured to tick off as we go along this journey we call life…
I’d
like to think that most people have goals and live life trying to pursue them
for overall satisfaction, self-esteem and purpose, but I also know that others
including our family and friends alike may have their own agenda and desires
that they would like to realize through us! And then there is also society and
its norms and pressures that add an additional layer to boxes we are expected
to tick off at a certain age to conform to certain acceptable standards.
Now
trouble seemingly starts to brew in your camp when you either do not have
goals, so you go with the flow or you have goals and don’t stick your guns out
to defend them or you just down rightly refuse to conform to certain societal
standards then others (read society) start to think there is something
inherently wrong with you.
The
speaker gave us her own life example; it was neither meant to be spiteful nor filled
with doses of vanity but rather her own illustration of her own life boxes…and
the call that we should individually choose our own boxes based on what we want
and desire at a person level and not because it is perhaps expected of us
especially as women!
One
of the earliest boxes we have in life is education…the speaker mused that in that
category she nailed each box by doing well in school and got additional ‘’bonga
points’’ for taking on school captain and the most disciplined student right from
primary school through to secondary…. off course this soared her easily to
campus where she took a ‘’prestigious’’ course befitting of such a good girl.
Now
in her mid-twenties, with a solid education at hand her next boxes to quickly
tick off were; landing that job in a blue-chip company to be the envy of her
peers, finding a suitable mate, getting hitched and starting a family in that
order before hitting the big 3.0! Being the super achiever she clearly is, she
managed to do all that by 25 and even went further sadly to change careers (because
she didn’t have a say in what she actually studied for), contemplate divorce (because
she really didn’t know her partner before they got married), attempt suicide
and challenge social stereotypes by age 29!
I
like happy endings and luckily for our speaker so did she… and so her story had
a great ending that left everyone in the room in tears…the point I took home
with me that night was that there is nothing wrong with having goals and
dreams. I am an avid fan of the quote ‘if your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t
big enough..’ but we need to always remember why we do certain things. If they
are for others we may easily get by doing them, but one day we may feel
frustrated and disappointed because we are not being true to our own selves. I
also appreciated the need to develop thick skin. Even if society may pressure
us to behave in a certain way or accomplish certain boxes by a certain age,
life is not a race and even if it were the only contender you should be racing
with is yourself and your own pace and speed!
So this
long weekend I will be defiantly take time to reflect on my boxes, the big ones
and the small ones too, the colored ones and those that need more color in them
as well as throwing out those boxes that weren’t really mine!
