What's the Point? That's Up to You!

Stress has always been a part of student life, but today things are more complicated than ever: with higher dropout rates and greater stakes, depression and confusion are endemic. So, as you make your way through college, you can be excused for asking from time to time, “What’s the point?” While there are always a few who know exactly where they’re going, most students are at college in the hope of finding out what they want in life. If that describes you, you may hope, as I did, that the process will transform your flexible young mind into an emotional-intellectual identity with direction and purpose. Flash back to my first day of higher learning: I enter the campus of my alma mater in the North London suburb of Ponders End in just such a state of shining optimism. By the time I sit down to my final exams four years later I feel like a piece of merchandise nearing the end of its production cycle. I suspected my teachers of being agents of an overweening state, determined to slot me into a conveyor belt of job, marriage, mortgage, grind, kids, retirement, aging and death. I thought, “What about me?” Narcissistic? Absolutely. Wrong? No way.rnI walked out on my exams and never looked back. Since that day my life’s been much harder than it might otherwise have been, and there have certainly been times I considered my decision rash, but it also led me to places, experiences and realizations I wouldn’t have missed for anything. The reasons behind my little melodrama are too complicated to go into here. Let’s just say I was rattled, anxious to do something drastic. I don’t suggest you follow my example, but I do have a point: a job’s only good if it’s good for you. High-powered, high-paying prestigious positions with big companies sound great, but will they really make the best of you, or are you just trying to impress yourself? They can leave you bored and boring. Life’s short; do you have time for that? You don’t have to scuttle your chances of a good job, but you should take care not to compromise your independence of thought and direction. You may feel rudderless, but you’re still an individual, and something’s growing in you whether you recognize it or not. You’d be surprised how many thirty-somethings don’t know what they want from life…then forty-somethings, and then there’s mid-life crisis. How does that happen? It’s deadly easy: too many people try to ease the stresses and strains of life by simply following the crowd. The logic is simple and perfectly false: everybody can’t be lost—can they? Hmm. By the end of four or eight college years, you may think you’ve earned the right to material comforts—but rights are irrelevant. Do you want to follow your shining star or not? An impressive, well-paying position is just the topping, not the cake. Every society since the time of hunter-gatherers puts pressure on the young to abandon their dreams and “grow up.” Don’t worry about making the world a better place. Accept a humdrum life. You see, mediocrity is not a state of being. It’s a decision. Somewhere between the two extremes of dropping out and resigned acceptance is a middle way. That’s good not just for you but for our world. Society needs independent spirits, creative explorers, dissidents, free-thinkers and sometimes even drop-outs. Diversity makes for strong culture. Our political, intellectual and personal freedoms all began with people thinking outside the box. Without following your innate desire for personal fulfillment you’ll have no clear direction, and the skills you learn will fail to deliver your full potential. Back to my early life: After a few months enjoying the freedom of not giving a damn, the momentousness of my decision began to dawn on me. The time had come to either make sense of it or resign myself to ignominy. Of course, this wasn’t a well-considered, rational decision; it was a gut feeling; call it existential terror. What was becoming of me? It was time for something drastic again. I sold everything I had, said goodbye to family and friends and set out hitch-hiking, to Asia. It was the journey of a lifetime, which is not to say that it was pleasant. It was a grueling, soul-destroying, death-defying trip. I eventually took refuge among the Tibetans as a Buddhist monk, but in time even this sanctuary crumbled around me. Finally, I got the message that no one was responsible for my life but me, and that there was no escaping that responsibility. It set me on an inescapable path to honesty, and led to a happiness I’d never even dreamed of.