Satisfy Your Desire

 

"So..." David says. My tutor sets his glass onto my coffee table. He asks, "What are you passionate about?" which gets me thinking about what drives me forward in life.

 

Let’s start with money. They say "money makes the world go 'round," and the way people mean it worries me. I mean, I get that it affords us opportunities. And I get that it serves as the best medium of exchange for goods in modern civilization. But besides that, an annual income generally stops yielding overall happiness when it exceeds seventy-five thousand USD. With that, many of us ought to set litmus tests for all our passions, and look for field that would offer us humanistic value, not just a material payoff.

 

This brings me to my passion: helping those in need. I’m not trying to be Ol’ Wise or Jesus, or anything. In fact, my problem is I’m not entirely sure where I will channel this energy. Social justice sounds extremely likely, but so does art therapy... plus, I love teaching children... sometimes, this lack of a concrete plan is frustrating. It makes my pursuit of “helping people” an ambiguous and aimless one. But most days I grip this uncertainty and see it as the internal evaluation of my multipotentiality, or my need to deliberate all possibilities.

 

This devolves me into the subject of education, as learning is why I get fascinated about anything in the first place. By education I don't necessarily mean practical knowledge, but a wealth of knowledge and, so much more importantly, critical awareness. [...]

 

Like everyone else, I feel a desire to make a mark on the world, outlive death. Perfection - to find my limits and surpass them - justifies what I do. I strive to better the lives of others - what I do justifies my existence.