What really matters in life?
If I asked my mom this question, she would probably say having money and a happy family are the two things that really matter to her and to me (speaking for her daughter). My sister might say having a nice house where she has enough money to buy whatever she likes. Things like clothes, hand-pick furniture (of course, by her), travel tickets, etc. When I googled this question, there are 1,840,000,000 results varying from minimalism websites, buddha pages, magazines, etc. with titles like “10 ways to define what really matter”, “7 reminders of what really important in life”, etc. I don’t disagree with my mom, my sister or any of these articles. Their different responses just reflex one simple thing, there is only one unique answer for each person who asked.
So if it is that unique, asking this question isn’t really helpful. Instead, the question we should ask the public now should be “How do you know what matter in your life?” and then try to distill an approach from their answers to form your own decision. Imagine it’s like trying to find a neon skeleton in completed darkness 😄
But wait a minute, it still doesn’t feel right. I am sure you have been in a situation when you asked a question with a certain expectation for the answer but what you received was totally different. It’s like you asked about banana and the other person told you all about pineapple. It was obviously that two people were living in two different mental worlds. We normally weight up different aspects on different scales. So one more step is we should make it clear which aspects this question is targeting. We now should try to ask “How do you know what really matter in your career/personal life/family, etc.?
Ok the hard part is done. To find out what matters to one, we need to understand the roots of interest. Each individual has one or more unique interests, even the ones who say they are not interested in anything, their interest is hidden somewhere. Things that make them feel butterflies in their stomaches, things make them feel fulfilling, exciting and a sense of contentment. You now might ask a good movie can make people feel that way, does it mean movie is their interest? Yes, but what we are trying to figure out here is tied to the components in the previous question, career, personal life, family, etc, something bigger than a movie .
One way to know the roots of interest is to notice the signals or hints that the mind sends to us. For some people, it’s so easy to say out loud what they are interested in. It’s so obvious to them. This is especially true for artists. But for others, it’s clueless. Hence, picking on things like which sections at the bookstore we often stay longer, what kinds of activities we tend to go on the weekends, what groups of people we tend to hang out more than the others, what do you think repeatedly in the shower, might help.
Another way is to actually try different things for a certain period of time. If you never run before, try running 3 times per week and then stop will only make you hate running more. Try running every day for 30 days might not change your feeling toward this sport but it will definitely give you more insights on what will it bring you in the long run. In a nutshell, go all in for a certain period of time until you decently know and practice that stuff, if you don’t see any signals, go all out. This way might take you on a roller coaster of emotion, you feel so excited when you start and then experience a deep sense of disappointment as this is (again) not the thing that interests you at last. I personally think it’s ok to feel that way. At least, our emotion changes up and down, rather than just fluctuating at boredom. Life would be more compelling that way.
A third way that I am totally fond of is to follow our natural curiosity. Society seems to have very negative feelings toward fiction readers and promote the value of non-fiction, particularly self-help books. The term “reading books” seems to be engraved in human mind as if it’s an ultimate solution for wisdom and knowledge. That’s why book recommendation websites exist. These sites will be so helpful for fiction book readers but they will only make the non-fiction readers more miserable. If someone has to find book recommendations to fill in their reading time, I think they don’t follow their natural curiosity. If someone thirsts to be educated on certain topics, they would naturally try to read all the books on that topic anyway. Similarly, if you are keen to learn something, your natural curiosity will guide you there eventually.
Finding the roots of interest might be as easy as eating a piece of cake or as hard as lifting a heavy rock without a leverage. Some people might never find out what really matter to them, some were born with a strong sensation of what significances to them the most. Is it necessary to fit ourselves in a particular format? I don’t know. Each of us will have to sort it out ourselves. but the moment we found that neon colour in completed darkness, it would feel pretty awesome.
