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Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Some real stuff....

There's much talk about "work-life balance" these days; how the key to a happy and successful life is spending enough quality time with your loved ones while pursuing an increasingly demanding career. But one thing I keep hearing people say is "I just don't have the time!"

It seems odd to say that we are getting less and less time these days. I mean, time hasn't really diminished, has it? There have always been 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day. But it certainly does feel like time is getting scarcer, simply because we're getting busier.
Just think of the people you know, perhaps even yourself, who seem to be always in a rush to get somewhere or to do something. We've all bought into this collective belief that we must do more, work harder, do more things in an hour than others can in order to be more successful, make more money, to buy the things we think we need.

We've come to equate quality of life with the quality of things our money can buy. Even the quality of our relationships seems to be based on the kind of gifts or provisions we can give our loved ones - a nicer phone, a bigger house, a more expensive necklace, or the latest video game console.

We think that in order to be happy and successful, we need to achieve a certain measure of status or wealth, so we try to attain that success in the shortest time possible. In our mad rush to get there, we pack more into our schedules, try to develop a more competitive edge, become harder and colder, sleep less, work more, sacrifice personal time and relationships, all for the day - the day when we achieve enough to be happy.

But how much is enough? The belief that happiness is tied to how much you have is an illusion because the more we have, the more we want, and the more we want, the less contented and the less happy we become. We're chasing a goal that can never be reached on this path that we've chosen and what many people don't realize is that while we're pursuing this goal, we're delaying happiness - happiness that is possible now; happiness that we are not experiencing because we're chasing something else.

The only way we can get out of this mad rush is to stop feeding this collective frenzy. Stop following the crowd. Stop chasing imaginary shopping lists of things we need in order to be happy. Stop relying on artificial and temporary fixes for our problems, like buying things in order to feel good about ourselves. We need to stop being busy and ask ourselves what all this "busy-ness" is for. Does it really fulfill us? Are we really working towards things that will make us happy? What do I truly value in life? What does success mean to me? What am I doing today that brings me closer to my real goals? My real dreams? My real passion?

Only you can answer these questions, but the key to finding the direction you need is to meditate on these questions and come up with your own answers, not blindly follow a path simply because you're on it.

A Slice of Life is written, produced and presented by Eugene Loh unless otherwise stated. If you wish to share the scripts with others, please credit it to 'Eugene Loh, A Slice of Life, 938LIVE, a station of MediaCorp Radio'.

{10:00 AM}