Dealbreakers

What matters in life?

Pretty deep question to begin a post on, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately. How do people determine what takes priority in their life? For most people, making money tops the list. Your job is the one way that you can fuel all the other needs that exist- food, clothing, shelter, maintaining relationships. My roommate came back from her break today, exasperated about the importance that jobs have over nearly all other aspects of life.

"It controls everything!" she exclaimed, eyes wide and arms raised. "People leave their families because of their jobs! People live with people or don't live with people because of their jobs... people move hundreds of miles away, they change their lives for their jobs. It's so messed up!"

There's a small bit of her that is being overdramatic- of course people give things up for their jobs. After all, we need them to acquire our other needs. But it made me think about how much of our identities our jobs can become. When does that part of your identity override the other important things in your life?

Even beyond the broader things that people prioritize- jobs, family, friends, relationships, pets- within each of those are more things to rank in order of importance. Looks or personality? Duty or desire? Head or heart? How do we choose when presented with two options, equally important but in different ways? As we get older, these choices get harder and we're forced to make more compromises because of the increasingly complex web of obligations that tangles up our priorities.

Somewhere along the line, we are confronted with people or things that have nothing to trump them. Our dealbreakers. For some, it's staying at work past 6 on a Friday. For others, it's smoking cigarettes. We choose and define our breaking point, a line we draw in the sand and mark with a sign- Do not cross.

One of the worst parts about being young is the ignorance of what our boundaries are. Very few of us have real dealbreakers, and if we do we hesitate to admit them because we are still unsure. I think we get to our breaking point, to our limit, to the place where we need to yell "STOP! This is enough!" and we can't say no. We're conditioned to not quit, to keep trying, to work it out. If we were older, wiser, we'd recognize this and find an out.

But maybe this is the beauty (or really, the shitty part) of being young. That you figure out your boundaries and breaking point by testing them and surpassing them. That you find your dream job by trying the million and one jobs you absolutely hate. Or, that you find your dream job by hating it passionately at first and then pulling yourself up, inch by inch, until you understand what it's all about.

Maybe I'm just rambling in an effort to find a way to avoid the Sunday night anxiety and the Thanksgiving break horror so many TFA teachers have been warning me about. But it's an interesting thing to consider.