My Life Purpose

Malang, 08 August 2019

Am I the only one who think being an adult means you get bored easily? It feels like there are not many things that interest me like they used to be. I still remember how excited I was to explore new places, buy new clothes, eat food I’ve never tried before, having new tech, hang out with my friends to fancy cafes or restaurants, taking a bunch of pictures with instagrammable background, scrolling down my social media, and so on. Now that I’m about to reach my 27, those things no longer excite me. Not only about that but also material possessions and achieving life goals don’t energize me.

Throwing back to previous years, I was so obsessed trying new things about my job and a couple of times applying for scholarships. Now, I don’t feel the same. I’m still productive for sure. I love my job. But unlike my friends out there, I’ve never been into reaching a higher ground, let’s say higher positions. I enjoy my salary so much but I don’t really think I should earn that much like those people wish for. I like living my life the way I have it now. I can do something for others and at the same time I enjoy my me time. That’s more than I could ask for. But when I look at the others and then look at me, wow I’m so different. I never thought I would be that different.

I don’t feel bad about myself. Absolutely not. I love who I am no matter how different myself from the rest of the world. This piece of thought actually helps me to come to a realization. What makes us different in living our life might actually come from our life purpose. Everyone has their own version of life purpose. My life purpose is simple. I want to live a happy and meaningful life for myself and the world. How to achieve that? I become a teacher. I live a minimalist life. Since I concern about enviromental problems, I go zero waste though I’m not perfect. I often share meaningful or thought-provoking posts for people who follow my social media. So at least they can learn something from it.

From a podcast in Inspigo, I knew that life purpose and life goal are two different things. Life purpose is something that you live every day from the time you wake up until you go to bed. While life goal is our target in life that we try to accomplish in the future. To tell you the truth I actually have no idea what my life goal is. I don’t think I have one. I think I’ve never had any dream goals or dream jobs since I was a kid. I just go with what my heart says. If at that time I want to be a doctor, I will say I want to be a doctor. If I want to be a journalist, I say journalist is what I want to be. I’m always that kind of girl who knows how she wants to live her day to day life but has no idea what she will do in the future. I always live in the present.

There was a time when I was forced to live my present days for building my future. School life forced me designing my unpredictable future to be a bit more predictable. I can understand it very well why it happened. Education is an exclusive card to access the future that you want. No parents in this world want their children to have a sad life. I also don’t want my life to be miserable when I grow older. So yeah I tried my best to excel at school subjects and competitions. My parents are great. They never force me to be perfect at everything. At least what I could do can guarantee my future. That’s what they prepare me for. I’m so grateful for that. I don’t want to be included in that group of children who are forced to do everything their parents want. Absolutely not. And I don’t want to do that to my children will be. It’s their life. They ought to choose their own path right?

It is still fresh for me the moment I wrote a post about my quarter life crisis experience. I can remember how bad it was to feel anxious about my future. Well, that moment was actually forming because of some external factors. They didn’t essentially come from my inner self. Now I realize deep in my heart I am always fine with the life I’ve lived. I used to compare myself a lot with my friends who seem more successful than me. I used to be burdened by expectations put by people around me. I kept feeling bad about myself because it seemed I’ve never been good enough despite everything I’ve achieved and gained in my whole life.

My social media checking habit is the main cause of this disaster. I don’t want to blame social media deliberately for this because well social media is genuinely created to feed our ego of getting more and more attentions. It’s our checking habits and accounts that we follow which  make us getting anxious. Now that I know the source of my anxiety, I shift my mindset and habit. I stop viewing my friends’ IG stories that often. I stop scrolling down my timeline at all. No matter how close we are, I just stop doing it. I just view them when I’m extremely vacant and it means very rarely. I just scroll down my timeline when meowed updates its cute cat contents. Yeah, I’m obsessed with cats.

In my opinion, a real friendship is about the connection we build outside the social media. Your conversations and communications in real life are what matter. Well, it doesn’t mean social media friendship is fake. I still do chatting with my friend who lives far away through social media. But when we chat, I make sure we have a real conversation to get better understanding and build a real communication. I just use chatting feature when it’s really impossible to meet them in person. When I can meet time in real life, I will definitely avoid chatting online. Also chatting online is such a hassle for me. I’m not good at typing on my smartphone screen. It takes my precious time for me to retype my typo chat and I don’t enjoy that at all.

So what’s the point of this quite long post? Well I don’t know. Haha I just write it because I’m really bored at the moment. I try to figure out why I get bored so easily recently. I saw my friend were really excited when they bought new stuff and planned a new trip. And I was just there wondering why they don’t excite me anymore. Maybe I already passed the moment when those things really matter for me. I’m really excited when I do small house chores. It surprises me that little-things-that matter interest me more than a vacation does. I like scrolling down Pinterest and having this crazy ideas to try them when I get back home. I can’t stop listening to TED Talk podcasts. The ideas they share are mind-blowing. I learn a lot from them. I read more books about history and philosophy. I used to love fantasy but now it doesn’t excite me. I love watching youtube videos about minimalism, enviroments, zero waste, bedroom make over, new music mvs, mindfulness, and of course humanism. Well, there are a lot of things I want to try in the upcoming days. I can’t wait to do them.

So guys, have you found your life purpose? Or do you have similar experiences or thoughts? Or maybe you have a different opinion about it? I really wish there is someone out there who feel the same like me. I think it will be very nice to know that I’m not alone in this journey. Let me know your opinion about it on the comment section down below. Feel free to post your comments!