Obligatory Enjoyment

As sort of a continuation from yesterday's post, which was about directing intention, I write this one about directing enjoyment, which is the step that bridges most of us to our intentions. This was thought of before that one, when i was sitting in Geology class and our professor advised all of us, after suffering a heart attack that set our syllabus a bit behind, to choose a job we enjoy doing, because life is short and it's useless to save money at the expense of happiness.

Intentions are born through desire. It is in wanting to get to an island where we find the intention to build a boat. In bigger terms, in our day-to-day grind, it will be difficult to direct your intention for an act towards a bigger picture that you don't really understand, or feel inspired to be a part of.

We are used to seeing enjoyment as a form of a reward. Something we don't control. A treat. A welcome surprise. But maybe we are relinquishing too much of our authority in this. Maybe we have more control over it than we'd like to think we have.

I'm beginning to wonder about the possibility that people can find genuine happiness through seeing enjoyment as obligatory. Something that MUST be had. Not something one just chances upon or doesn't according to fate's design.

The idea of manipulating one's level of enjoyment in a given activity may sound like a heinous crime to people who are be-true-to-yourself fanatics. It may sound like insincerity, lies, compromise. But if you really think about it, what are you compromising when what you gain is happiness? Isn't happiness the point of it all? This endeavor basically rewards itself.

In a perfect scenario, you'd sit down and decide what you want, and simply go for it and get it. For example, you get in a company you really love doing business you really love doing, and you totally believe in your company and think that the earth is a better place with it. But a lot of us leave our true desires aside to make way for convenience. That's not necessarily wrong, but it leads us to the typical lifestyle of a person hating their job. And when you're already there, should you ever decide to settle there for the meantime instead of leaving it to go for what you want, wouldn't you like to be enjoying yourself?
Yeah yeah, I know... One cannot always simply just decide they like something. But when you are stuck in a situation that does not have an easy fix, would you choose to hate every minute of the wait, or learn to enjoy the process somehow?

I believe that even with the absence of feeling one with your company's vision or whatever, you can still enjoy yourself enough to lead a healthy lifestyle that doesn't push your blood pressure through the roof or send you into slow depression. By slicing your idea of time into bite-sized pieces and focusing on each slice.
It's not about lying to oneself. True enjoyment isn't even possible if you're aware that it's not real. That would be called acting. Not the same thing. What I think is possible, is a person actively LOOKING to find something to feel happy about, even when it's small, and actively trying to look at their jobs as positively as they can. Basically, respecting themselves as they have been taught to respect everyone else's occupation no matter what they are.

I really do hope that whatever I do after college, I will respect. I wish to not have to talk about it with disdain in my voice when my friends ask about what I do. I mean, of course I'd be self-depreciating about it, or be humble or whatever, but I hope that it's a: "it's small but i'm enjoying it" kind of thing instead of a "argh i hate my job i don't belong here i'm so unfulfilled what am i doing" kind of thing. I imagine that when I feel weary and bored and tired of the routine, I might try and do that pathetic thing where I imagine myself as someone I'm watching. I somehow have this belief that whoever I become, if I'm not aware of myself somehow voyeuristically, then I will sink into weariness. Why? (I know it sounds really weird so let me explain) Because I'm trained to see/create an image of an ideal being as how they might look in front of me, but not so much how they FEEL inside their own bodies. I don't even really imagine myself when I think of an ideal being. Just an abstract image or idea of a woman being whatever I want to become at any moment, and if my imagination was a video, the being would be in the frame. It isn't the POV kind of deal, which I think it should be, because if it's not, then my reality would never be the same. And since that's kind of hard for now, I'm sticking with just being aware of the "me" as a viewer outside of it, looking at it. It somehow always looks better to me that way. Everyone looks cooler to me when I watch them. But when I imagine myself living their lives I feel like I'd exactly the way I feel about my life anyway, why not just admire my own?

In the end, if what you are doing is even the least bit worthwhile, you'll find something worth your while to do, and happily. If you don't, then maybe you should rethink your priorities and do something else. Life is short, soldier. Chop chop. (sorry about the preachy tone. But I'm only talking to myself here.)

image source