When will it click and I'll find out my role in this world?

[Aldo]

I'm 30 years old and I work in a shitty part time retail job. At one point I was aiming to turn it into a career. Then that all seemed to disappear and now I'm left wondering what my role in this world really is.

Soon I'm going to move back in with the parents so I can go back to school and pursue something worthwhile. But what then? What if I end up in that role and still don't feel like this is what I am meant to do? It's all very frustrating.

Is there any moment where it just clicked for you?

 

[RoJoHen]

I don't think anybody is "meant" to do anything. You do things. Sometimes they work out; sometimes they don't. I am often restless, and I honestly can never see myself settling into a career. Just the idea of doing one thing for the rest of my life is appalling to me. My dad has been at the same place for the last 30 years. That's longer than I've been alive! I can't even fathom doing something for that amount of time.

 

[Aldo]

I just feel like I keep flirting with two different lifestyles. The slacker who lives with other slackers and works a meager retail job. Or this stable (potential) family man who works a regular nine to five type job.

I will be taking a shot at the latter, and trying to leave the former lifestyle behind. Which while it is fun, it won't help me financially in the long run.

 

[RoJoHen]

For what it's worth, I started a "regular 9-5" job at the beginning of the year, and I fucking hate the schedule. The job is fine, but I can't stand the hours. I would much rather go back to working nights and weekends.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

I don't believe that any of us are "made" for something in particular, Aldo. Our role in life is a combination of what we make it, and what circumstance hands us. To be honest, I sometimes think we do our people a disservice by pushing the concept of "career" at every opportunity. No-one in my family ever had a career; they had jobs. They did the best they could with them, as so many others do. Defining yourself by what you do rather than who you are isn't going to bring happiness, particularly when so many of us simply take what work we can get. Please never look upon yourself as a failure just because a path hasn't opened up before you in your mind.

I certainly understand and sympathise with your frustration; the urge and the drive to do something meaningful with oneself, to apply oneself to something that will engender a sense of purpose, is strong. That desire to be and do something worthwhile is a noble one, and personally I think it speaks most highly of you, but not everyone has a "calling", or at the very least it might take a long time for one to become apparent. If there is something that will bring you fulfillment, then I recommend whole-heartedly that you persue it, but if you haven't found one yet, please don't feel bad about it. We all just move forward through life as best we can.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Never, life will just grind you down into the inevitable grave.

 

[Lord Garth]

The benefit of college is that you can choose a major and if you don't like it then you can can change it.

Go to college, meet new people, find out what to do to take the next step while you're there, and it will fall into place. If it doesn't, then at least you'll know more than you did at the beginning. If you don't know what you're "meant for" and least you'll know what you're not meant for, instead of wondering.

It didn't just click for me. I can't point to any one thing. It's been a gradual process over many, many years. I'm still trying to make life work but I'm further along than I was before.

The road to success isn't easy and it's not a straight line. If it were then everyone would be a success. The trick is to understand the twists and turns and not give up too soon.

One more thing: you have to be aggressive. If things need to change, and they're not, you need to find a way to make the change happen. Switch jobs, start something of your own independently. Do something. Don't wallow in a bad situation that won't improve. These are things I had to learn the hard way. My back was against a corner, I had to take action, and I did.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

I just feel like I keep flirting with two different lifestyles. The slacker who lives with other slackers and works a meager retail job. Or this stable (potential) family man who works a regular nine to five type job.

I will be taking a shot at the latter, and trying to leave the former lifestyle behind. Which while it is fun, it won't help me financially in the long run.

Please forgive my boldness, Aldo, but I've observed, in general, that there seems to be a conflict in society between an established sense of what one needs to be "marketable" and the actual economic situation. You seem to me to be saying, and this appears to be a common way of looking at things, that your status as a potential family man - as a prospect for relationships/fatherhood, I suppose - depends on your ability to hold a regular well-paid job. But with the ecomony as it is, finding a stable, well-paid job is going to be difficult, for so many. If expectations as to "marketability" or worth don't relax but the economy is tightening, then many people are going to feel devalued, which I don't believe for a moment they should. I hope you don't feel that you would make any less of a decent prospect just because you aren't a super-aggressive, super-successful go-getter with a stable position. Pease don't beat yourself up or devalue yourself because you're not hitting a bar that is, to be blunt, probably raised too high, at least at the moment.

 

[RoJoHen]

I know a lot of stable family men who survive on nothing more than their unemployment benefits.

 

[Rincewiend]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSv-lKwOQvE[/yt]

 

[sojourner]

Work to live, don't live to work. Look at a job as a way to finance your life, Not a way to consume it.

 

[Kestra]

I hear you dude. I went back to school for something that seems farther and farther away with each passing day. Things rarely work out just right. You find the right job at the wrong time, figure out what you want to do when you can't afford it, etc. Do the best with what you have and keep working towards your goals.

 

[TerokNor]

I don´t think there is something like the click and thats it. Life has ups and downs, clear thoughts, clouded thoughts, happy days, sad days...

However I notice the older I get the better I can get myself to the point of making myself realize again and again what is truly important in my life and the more often I realize it, the more content I am with the way I am walking.

Maybe that would help you too? To think about whats important in your life? Truly important I mean.

For example, when I walk through the woods being angry about something or stressed I breath in deeply and I realize what a present it is to walk through these woods, how clear the air is, how green the leaves, how lovely the birds sing... how happy I can be to be. And than I realize whats important for me and everything else loosed its sharpness and I know "my place in the world" for the moment...its right were I am, being me in this time, no matter what way I walked or will walk. Its a nice feeling.

I´d say, if one is not happy with the job or whatever, give it a change, but don´t live only in the future and trying to chatch on to these goals. Live also in the present and be conscious about what a wonder it is to be.

Does that makes sense to you or does it make only sense to me?


TerokNor

 

[Me-Ike]

The good thing is that you are going back to school. At least you are still struggling to find that place you are looking for instead of just shrugging your shoulders and giving up.

Like you I am also still frustrating around and trying to find my place in the world. But even if we aren't there yet, as long as we avoid the "why even bother" mindset, we're good.

 

[Starbreaker]

Life is what you make of it. Go back to school and get in a job in something that's in high demand. Good things will happen.

 

[RandyS]

I'm 30 years old and I work in a shitty part time retail job. At one point I was aiming to turn it into a career. Then that all seemed to disappear and now I'm left wondering what my role in this world really is.

Soon I'm going to move back in with the parents so I can go back to school and pursue something worthwhile. But what then? What if I end up in that role and still don't feel like this is what I am meant to do? It's all very frustrating.

Is there any moment where it just clicked for you?

No, and that's because life doesn't work that way. The idea of some "special destiny" is science fiction. Nothing else. It's up to you to make your life whatever you want it to be.

Use me as an example of that helps. I'm eleven years older than you, and have lived with cerebral palsy all my life. When I was about eight, my mom was told by some idiot doctor that I would not live to see fifteen. Upon hearing that, I decided this quack was wrong, and starting doing pyshical therapy. 33 years later, I live on disability income and am unable to work (mostly due to tiring easily), but the point is, I SURVIVED.

Because I decided I was going to.

 

[Holdfast]

Worrying about your role in the world is a topsy-turvy way to look at the problem, and I suspect only likely to lead to dissatisfaction, unless you happen to strike it lucky. Better to figure out how the world should revolve around you.

I'm not actually kidding. If you think through the wider implications of that statement (it's nothing to do with selfishness, for example), you'll figure out why it makes much more sense, and will help you identify a niche and/or the degrees of freedom that you can be content within.

 

[RJDiogenes]

As the others have said, you can't find out your role in this world, because there is nothing to find out-- you decide what your role will be. There are no plans beyond the plans you make.

 

[RoJoHen]

One thing that definitely needs to be stressed here is that going back to school and getting a degree is absolutely no guarantee of stable employment in the future. Even if you study a field with a lot of demand, you might graduate and find yourself right back in retail, unable to find work in a better field. Don't get your hopes up.

 

[Me-Ike]

^ That is most certainly true, but it's still the trying part that rocks lives.