Growing up - Part II

Good Friday + Easter Weekend = A long weekend before my shift commences a week from now. To be exact - 20th April 2009.

I will be lying if I say I'm not anxious, and at the same time, nervous about it. It was the kind of feeling whereby 'you're looking forward to it but not looking forward to it '.

The 'looking-forward' portion includes the smooth traffic, the monetary benefits and the flexible timing in a certain sense. And the 'not looking-forward' portion includes the irregular work hours, the no-more-weekend entertainment and the drift from social life. Anyhow, this is what I signed up for. I should not regret and I have no regrets.

And over the weekend, there were a couple of coffeeshop chats. And so we've concluded - Growing up is harsh.

There's too much details toward it. There's relationship and its process cycle. There's friendship and its maintenance. There's family. There's marriage. There's wedding dinner. There's mum and dad. There's mum-in-law and dad-in-law. There's babies. There's child's education. There's building up your own family. There's many thing, anything and everything. There's simply too much details to go through in a lifetime. It's simply too costly to make it perfect. And yes. "Costly" is definitely the word for perfection.

Everyone views perfection is many different ways. What is your perfection?

And the answer to perfection bound to be an expectation, in an indirect sense, that create pockets for disappointment.

We expect. Although there's really nothing wrong towards expecting. The only downside to expectation is that we often get ourselves disappointed.

Most people in our era knows nothing about fortunate. Most people in our era knows nothing about satisfaction. And most people in our era have no idea how pampered we actually are. We want more. More is good. More's always good. In the end, we never seems to get satisfied with our lives. In the end, we got so disappointed by the act of our own actions. In the end, we got stuck in a pit without any knowledge how to get out from. We are a slave to our own doing.

On another note, we are cultured in such a way where there's always room for improvement. "You're good. Well done for this or that project. But nevertheless, there's always room for improvement." Simply said, it's never going to be good enough, and so we never feel good enough. We never ever feel satisfied. And so we continue to strive for the better. The best part is, there's nothing wrong with it, and in fact it's a good trait. The worst part is, slowly and surely, we become a slave to another doing.

Sounds pretty contradicting and confusing isn't it?

Growing up, by itself, is already a very harsh matter. Expectation simply makes growing up even more harsh. And these expectations open up many pockets for disappointment. There's probably only one solution towards this imbalance equation - omit the expectation.

Yet again, another problem arises... Can we really not have any expectations to begin with?