The carpet merchants

I once heard about a group of carpet merchants whose shops are all next to each other in the marketplace.  Individually, they don't keep regular hours.  As soon as one of them makes the amount he wants for the day, he'll close up shop and leave the rest of the day's business to the others.

When I first heard about them, I thought, "Don't they know how to do business?"  Then I thought, "Wow!  How altruistic!  Instead of competing, they're sharing the business."  Now, I see it differently.

They're just choosing how to spend their time.  Once they have the money that they need, they move on with the rest of their day and do other things.  Instead of living to make money, these merchants making money to live.

What do you want to do?

Seems like a simple question, doesn't it?

I remember a friend asking me this close to ten years ago.   He had asked me what I wanted to do after graduating and I mentioned something along the lines of whatever would make my family happy.

I actually didn't see it as my own choice to make.  I saw my life as an optimization problem where my task was to do whatever would be most pleasing to people around me.   I was quite content with that.

My friend wasn't.

He tried to ask me what I wanted to do.   I told him it doesn't matter what I wanted to do and so I never really put much thought into it.  I didn't know what I wanted to do and I wasn't too keen on figuring it out.  I honestly didn't think that what I wanted was important.  My plan was to do whatever I needed to do, to do my duty and do what was needed of me.

My, how things have changed...

Now, I find myself devoting much of my time trying to figure out the answer to that question that I didn't even think was worth answering.  What do I want to do?

If I've learned anything in the past few years, it's that I don't want to do what I don't want to do.  It's just too hard.  And painful.  And frustrating.  And a waste of my time and effort.  A waste of my life.

So, while I have the luxury and the opportunity to do it, I'm going to spend some time trying to figure out some answers.  Because now, I want to do what I want to do.

Freedom and responsibility

I've been taking time off lately.  After finishing my PhD I wanted to spend some time thinking and looking around before jumping into my next big project or job or time commitment.  So, for the past few months, I've been pretty much doing whatever I want, whenever I want.  It's pretty awesome.

Today, it hit me that with this freedom comes responsibility.  It's great to be able to choose what to do each day but that means that I have to choose what to do each day.  There's no boss telling me what to do.  The responsibility of using my time wisely lies squarely on my shoulders.  I can't delegate it to someone else.

It's very easy to take the easy road and lose hours and hours to reading news commentary or watching YouTube.  But like that standing-on-a-hill analogy, although it's fun to run down the hill, it's not much fun afterwards, when you find yourself at the bottom.  I need to keep that empty, at-the-bottom-of-the-hill feeling in mind before I start down the slippery slope of YouTube or Huffington Post.

Freedom is wonderful.  But in and of itself, it's no key to happiness.  That key lies in the choices I make with the freedom I've been given

Kinetic and Potential Energy

Sheikh Mukhtar Maghraoui gives an analogy with kinetic and potential energy. I hope I can express it properly here.

We are constantly faced with choices. We can choose to do what we want, what our lower self (i.e. id or nafs) wants to do. These things are easy, and we generally feel good while doing them. Or, we can choose to do what's right, which often means fighting our lower selves. And this is the more difficult option.

It's like we are standing on the slope of a mountain. The easy way is to go down, and gain kinetic energy. This is what we do when we follow our lower selves. It's easy. It's fast. But, in the end, we end up much lower than we were when we started. And the more we choose this route, the lower we go and the more difficult it becomes to get up to the level we were at before.

The other choice is to go up. And give up kinetic energy in return for potential energy. It's difficult. It's a struggle. But, in the end, we end up higher than where we started. And we become stronger. We've gained potential energy.

Your Life or Your Money

If someone put a gun to your head and asked you to choose between keeping your life or keeping your money, you would surely keep your life and give away your money. But every day, millions of people go to work, to jobs that they hate. Thereby, in effect, giving up their lives in exchange for money. Every day.