In this world, everyone is drunk on something. You have to be. As soon as you are born, when you are being exposed to the world, you find that you have to choose what do you want to get drunk on. We are granted this limited amount of empty time on planet earth, and to chase after things and what we are drunk on is how we pass time. It is how we gain ‘meaning’ to our existence. So, the question is, what are you drunk on?
Some chooses money. Some chooses power, knowledge and fame. Or beauty, thrill and excitement, and religion. And in the process of chasing after something, we will experience both joy and agony. Aye, everything is a trade off. Everything we chase, there is a cost. For me, I chase knowledge. Like many engineers and technical people, I find joy in learning the working of things and the logical reasoning behind problem solving. I enjoy quenching my thirst for knowledge by reading and talking to intellectual people. And I pay for the cost like so. I constantly feel that I am not smart enough, and that I need to learn these twenty other bunch of skills to be better, to be more eloquent, to be great. I feel inferior towards smart people who’ve achieved such and such at a mere young age. And I constantly beat myself up for falling behind a certain field of knowledge.
Aye, the price of getting drunk of something is that it will never be enough. And hence, it’s worth a little extra time to dig a little deeper into yourself. Why do you feel the need to constantly chase after what you are chasing? While it’s human nature to be drawn to things that we like or believe in, it is also useful to question and challenge the reasons that make us so. It is in this process that we can know what drives us and why. To know why is to accept our being as it is, and to accept is to be able to let go of certain expectations and hence help us feel a little better of why we are who we are. To understand what brings us agony will also allow us to ease that agony.
So, identify what it is that you are drunk on. Understand why it brings you joy, as well as agony. When you are mindful of such, you are in better control of your actions and thoughts. To understand is the first step to solving or fixing a problem. And mayhaps, when you know what it is that you are drunk on, you can continue to experience the joy it brings, and use it as a tool to achieve greater things, yet mindful of it so that you are not blindly controlled by it.
