It’s not what you think/Outside the box: soul searching

By U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region (Searching for musselsUploaded by AlbertHerring) [CC BY 2.0 or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

There are sometimes days when things are especially dire and you stop and ask yourself, ‘what do I want from life?’ Now when I say dire, I don’t mean something like your house burning down, losing all your possessions kind of dire, I’m talking about that destroyer of hopes, dreams and the willingness to go on, depression. Depression can hit anyone at any time for any reason, but one of the of the more common reasons why people get depressed is because their lives are not going how they pictured it or because they are not living the life they want to live.

I’m talking about those people who are working the usual 9 to 5 office jobs where they stick you in cubicles and make you complete tasks that are repetitive and thankless, the ones in which your boss gives you a huge lecture if you don’t do well and just says nothing if you do. Now there are some people who are okay with this kind of lifestyle but some of us aren’t. Some of us have only taken this job because either we couldn’t get the job we actually wanted, we need to pay the bills somehow, we were forced into this job, or some other reason. Those of us who don’t like our job usually find ways to cope, like maybe by taking up a hobby, hanging out with friends, hanging out with our loved ones or other things. But sometimes it just isn’t enough, sometimes the job just takes more out of us faster than we can replenish it, leaving us feeling drained and unfulfilled, and that is when the depression sets in.

When this happens I feel it is really time to soul search; you need to ask yourself the tough question of what you want from your life and what you want to do with it. Do you continue doing what you are doing, finding different ways to cope? Or do you change the course? Maybe you feel too scared to make a choice; maybe circumstances are such that you cannot make a choice. Whatever the reason and whatever the outcomes, remember, be honest with yourself. You should know what you want even if you think you can’t achieve it. Believe me, not knowing what you want and trudging on feels a lot worse than knowing what you want and trudging on. You know what they say, it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

So search yourself and ask yourself what is it you really want, after that whether you pursue your dream now or not will be entirely up to you, but at the very least you will know what to look and strive for, when you get the chance.