How can I find the balance between this calling for some save-the-world vigor and grandeur, and the yearning for a more muted, subdued life filled with peace and contentment? In these past few years, I have been harboring no shortage of idealistic visions for a world where all the current ugliness of reality ceases to exist, but to inch closer to these fantasies, I am told to remain dissatisfied, angry, and indignant with the status-quo. Without some galvanizing sense of frustration and resentment, nothing can be changed, so they say.
Yet, another part of me just wishes for a selfish withdrawal from all the chaos and turmoil of real life. It’s like against all the discontentment with what the world is becoming, I have managed to simultaneously hold onto an internal anchor that helps drive out the tendency to be overly consumed by the demands of my surrounding. I have, for the longest time, been aware of the fact that I only need as much as a decent dwelling, sufficient means to get by, meaningful work, and the companionship of loved ones, to have a good life.
To think that all my efforts can amount to a notable change in this world is naive, but to resign to a complacent life free of worries is vain. There must be a middle point somewhere, mustn’t there?