I think most of the readers here do not worry about survival. I think you have food to eat and water to drink, and that no one is trying to kill you. If that does not describe you then I'm sorry but I really have nothing to offer you.
Good luck.
If, however, you can easily survive and continue existing as an organism, then I think I know what your concerns are. I think that since you do not worry about survival, you worry about happiness. A person will sacrifice happiness for survival in almost any scenario. So since you don't spend your days hunting and killing woolly mammoths with your tribe, you instead spend your days trying to be happy.
The issue, though, is how to go about achieving this so-called happiness. Besides eating, drinking, sleeping, and avoiding physical harm, everything you do is done in the hopes that it will maximize your level of happiness. (I use the word loosely, but I think you get the general idea.)
I am not assuming you are a deeply depressed individual who despises his/her life. I am just assuming that your life is not the best it can be.
I think you should change that.
Try this thought experiment: Think of your 24-hour day and everything you do in it. Think of the survival tasks (eating, drinking, sleeping, avoiding physical harm). Think of work-like tasks (school work you do not enjoy, a job, chores). Think of the time you spend being passive (watching TV/movies/mindless internet browsing, eating for pleasure, video games, hanging out with friends). Think of the time you you spend on purchasing and buying unnecessary things (nice clothes, car, phone, media). Think of all that, think of the time you spend doing those things.
Now what else do you do? Seriously think about what you do when you are not doing the aforementioned things.
How long is that list? How many minutes a day do you spend on these things? 0? 10? 30 is pushing it for most high schoolers. Most high schoolers spend their time surviving, working, buying, and relaxing. In general, most adults their time like this. Do you see anything wrong with this schedule? Where's the purpose? Where's the meaning? Where's the end result?
You survive so you can work. You work so you can buy. You buy so you can relax. More often than not, you buy too much and go into debt and work but buy too much again and work and buy and work and buy and work and buy... ad infinitum. From this model your life's purpose seems to be relaxing.
Instead I'm thinking that you should focus your attention on the time spent outside of those four categories. I'm thinking that is the good stuff. That is the productive stuff. Those are things that you do voluntarily, you are not forced to do them. And those are things that you do to feel engaged in life; you do not try to relax and distance yourself from reality when taking part in them. When you relax, you do it voluntarily but you are not engaging in reality. When you work, you do not do it voluntarily but you are engaging in reality. I'm not saying that someone sticks a gun to your head and tells you to work, but you work because you think you have to. You wouldn't do it unless you had to.
So what is "work?" Ask these questions:
Would you do this if you didn't get paid?
Does doing this make you happy?
If you answered "No" to both of these questions and you still do that thing, then it's probably work. That's not to say that work should be completely eliminated. Even activities that are productive and creative have pieces of them that are just "work." If you like the overall activity you may not enjoy each and every moment of it. For instance, I do interviews with students, but I don't get paid. Doing the interviews makes me happy. So it's not work. But transcribing the interviews into text to put on this blog is something that doesn't generate happiness for me and I would prefer not to do, unless I got paid for it. It's work. But it is an important part of the whole process, and I really like the overall process of learning and blogging about students. The mundane processes are usually what become work, and even productive and creative things consist of a certain level of mundane tasks.
We cannot eliminate work completely. But it should be minimized and shrunk to take up as little time as possible. This sounds kind of obvious, doesn't it? But it's weird, a lot of people will work for work's sake. What we all need to understand is that being busy is not the same thing as being productive.
What do we call the stuff that we would do without being paid and that does make us happy? I would call it things like producing and creating. This is because you are usually making something that can be used in the physical sense. You are also generating happiness in yourself.
So for the next few days, I think you should take note of how you spend your time. Surviving, working, buying, and relaxing. Be aware of the time spent on these things... and then let them go; ignore them; "destroy" them, figuratively.
What is left over?
That's the stuff you should be focusing on.
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