I needed to free my mind to do what I had never done before—figure out what I really wanted from my career—but I had spent too long concentrating on projects that required intensive analytical thinking without any personal involvement. I found that I couldn’t just shut down the logic and dream for a while.Our society just isn't built so that we can all take the time to figure out what we really want in life. It is so essential we maintain some expected level of productivity. Sometimes I get the feeling that I am a package moving through a production line. Especially in college I've made myself so busy with chasing "success" that to stop and rethink the idea of success is to lose ground in getting it. The day-to-day is a constant barrage of email, schoolwork, DEADLINES. One random obligation after the next is how life feels sometimes. Like you said, sometimes you have to reclaim your life because we often revert to autopilot in the face of routine expectations. We live in a system that aims to maximize time, output, profit. We are trained to quantify, calculate, reason. We are told that we must be productive.
What it all comes down to IMO is the "for the sake of..." What is all this productivity for the sake of?
Calculated optimization doesn't exactly leave a lot of room for people to reflect, to dwell, to think slowly. In fact, we often retreat into our busy lives to avoid thinking about something or other that bothers us. Our lives hum at a pace that makes it difficult to dwell and spend a lot of time thinking deeply about ourselves and the world. I resent that. Especially now that I am scrambling to complete law school applications, hoping that, since I have no idea what I want, a law degree will afford me more time and more options.
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