Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006
You Are Here
In Israel, where I live, there’s mandatory military service. More than a decade ago I found myself, like any other Israeli citizen, serving in the Army. There was nothing in the world I wanted to do less. At that time, I had already finished law school. The plan was to serve as a military lawyer, but somehow I found myself serving as “a plain soldier”. During the three-year service, the closest I was to the profession I had learned was when I was sentenced to fourteen days of detention for driving ten meters without wearing my seat belt. And yet, despite the fact that I went to law school mainly to avoid being “a plain soldier”, I found myself quite satisfied with the way things worked out for me.
A few years later, I had a good job with a nice salary as a software developer. By then, I already had a degree in computer science — the profession I chose after I had finished my military service. So, here I was with a nice job, working in the profession I had chosen for myself, living with my beloved wife, surrounded by a well-selected group of friends, and having just enough free time to do whatever I felt like doing. It should have been perfect — just as I had planned it — but something just didn’t feel right.
If this sounds even remotely familiar, you are in a good company. Many of us find ourselves wondering what it is that doesn’t feel right. We have all the reasons to be happy and be satisfied with our lives, but something keeps bothering us. We don’t know exactly what it is, but it is definitely out there — walking with us wherever we go.
We don’t think of it 24/7, but it is affecting almost everything we do. Sometimes it makes us worn-out when we allegedly have no reason to be. At times, it makes us edgy without any apparent cause. And sometimes this mysterious feeling remains hidden for years until it hits us like driving through a brick wall.
When you have an headache you probably take a couple of Aspirins. If they work, that’s a reasonable solution. But if that headache just keeps coming back, you will probably do whatever you can to find out its source. Treating the symptom will not solve the deeper problem.
The problem is that when it comes to that strange feeling that something is not working as planned in our lives, most of us don’t find the time or the energy to explore its origin. Maybe it’s our demanding reality, maybe it’s denial, and maybe it’s just lack of awareness, but the fact is that many of us are living with this feeling without any serious attempt to change it.
The good news is that if you are still reading this post you are probably aware of this feeling and denial is no longer an option. So the only option is to clear some time, gain some energy, and start working on a solution. As in any journey, you will have to decide where you are going. You will have to choose your path. But first, you will have to find out where you are.
If something just doesn’t feel right, you first have to find out what it is. If this doesn’t sound easy to you, you are probably right – it isn’t. But it is the only way.
So, why did I feel good during my military service? And what made me feel things are not working when everything was supposed to be great? We will try to figure these questions out soon.
In the next post, I will describe a method that might help us begin to understand where we stand: what makes us feel that something needs to be changed.