There’s this sense of guilt when one fails or struggles to do something when one’s heart isn’t in it. It’s always been faint, but sometimes it gets a little stronger. These days I’m learning to appreciate why it’s there.
Today, for absolutely no reason, I feel called to choose: should I try to live ‘more responsibly’, making sure to always do things when I’m called to just because, or should I accept that maybe, even if I’m not a ‘responsible’ person, I am, at least, one with much passion that if my heart is there anyone can bet I’ll deliver?
I’ve just finished another quarter of university requirements. That’s three courses in the last two-and-a-half month. It was easy: light and more than doable with barely any effort on my part, and yet I struggled so much especially in this last week when all was supposed to be already-almost-done.
I submitted my last requirement two days late, for the main reason that I couldn’t get myself to do it. The one before that was a similar sort of difficulty, too, but that was an exam which is a lot less serious for me than a philosophy thesis proposal. Granted, the thesis proposal is not my actual thesis proposal; it’s more of an exercise, a warm-up for my actual thesis next year. But I couldn’t do it. Not even when it’s the last one on my list before I can take a nice week-long break from university.
One reason might be because I’ve just lost interest in the topic, which was about the existential implications of social media. Just a couple of months ago, I was so into it and so it seemed like the best choice for my undergraduate thesis. It was interesting and I was passionate about it (I know I’ve written more than enough here previously. Ha ha). Right now, however, my heart is elsewhere. Not in that thesis topic, and not even in formal education.
Maybe it’s mainly that: my heart is just not in ‘formal education’ at the moment. The topic is still interesting for me—right now, I’m reading a related book, “A World Without Email” by Cal Newport—but just the whole process of having to do things just because I’m supposed to do them is getting to me.
It isn’t the first time, honestly. Maybe endings are just really that more challenging to me.
I remember the last semester of senior high school when a similar thing happened. I struggled so much mentally and emotionally that year but when I had recovered near the end of the first semester, I thought “All right. We’re okay now. It’s all good from here.” I even took on more work that time which—I have no idea how?—I managed to finished well. But on the last couple of weeks of that school year, I could barely do any more work, even if I felt generally okay. I couldn’t finish my last requirements, especially those that I know wouldn’t matter anyway. I was going to graduate, give a speech, and then go to ‘my only university of choice’. There was no fun having to do those last five requirements that I knew were there just because.
Well, back then I thought it was just because of that. That those aren’t necessary that’s why I couldn’t do them. But recently I realised it may be more than that. Last year, I was set to leave the organisation I had been heading and, honestly, really thought was the key to ‘my life purpose’. I was the head of the organisation and from that point I could have gone straight through that field. I’d finish my degree, have had gone through more similar organisations, and then wherever law school or something would take me. I almost took another major specifically for that path.
But August 2020, I sent my resignation letter and felt like I had been born again… almost. Because I still have one more major task to accomplish before I could leave. It was a new organisation and one of my goals for it was to write a structure that the next set of leads can follow, a manifesto of sorts. Before I even thought of resigning, I had already had it started. It was almost done, and yet I struggled so much finishing it.
I managed to do so, fortunately, although not in the level that I knew I could or at least, had wanted to. In the end—at that very end—I just want to get out because that whole space wasn’t resonating for me anymore. My heart was elsewhere.
There’s this sense of guilt when one fails or struggles to do something when one’s heart isn’t in it. It’s always been faint, but sometimes it gets a little stronger. These days I’m learning to appreciate why it’s there.
Today, for absolutely no reason, I feel called to choose: should I try to live ‘more responsibly’, making sure to always do things when I’m called to just because, or should I accept that maybe, even if I’m not a ‘responsible’ person, I am, at least, one with much passion that if my heart is there anyone can bet I’ll deliver?
I know my answer; it’s always been the same. Perhaps that’s mainly because I simply cannot do otherwise.
I don’t want to, so I won’t.
The few times I’ve tried, I felt that I either wasn’t able to give justice to the task—didn’t get to give it the respect and passion it deserved because I had none for it—or I just lost energy for everything else. Work which used to give me life had drained me. Maybe I’m also learning that not all work are the same.
And sometimes, too, it’s both. Or always, if I think about it, it’s usually the case that I both was not able to give the task the right energy and lost mine in the process as well.
Life’s too precious to waste it like that. Life’s too good to live like that. I want to live more passionately, doing only when my heart say so, even when my mind would more than likely take over.
Even writing that makes it seem like it should be easy. That’s what my mind is saying. “What are you talking about? The heart? What’s the point! What’s the use! What’s the goal! Let us think everything through.”
Ah, how the same guilt makes me want to say yes to that proposal.
However, I don’t. I don’t really want to. Now we’re in a different phase and I have no “goals” or whatever. The quarter has ended and there won’t be another one in a week or so. This last university quarter help me let go of the rest of my “objective objectives” which are top marks and academic merit. They have all lost their shine to my eyes now.
What then? What’s next?
I think if I try to read this as myself from a year ago, I’d ask those questions thinking “Had she lost her desire to live? What’s the point now?”
But oddly enough, now that I have none of those—no goals, plans, or the next step to do—I feel more like living.
Just that: just living.
I am <calmly excited>. Yes.