What Matters

In the past I've said that my ambitions lead me to want to be important or make decisions somehow, but as the three quarters of the first year of IB draw to a close, I've come to understand that that is not what I want. I do not want to destroy my own happiness and sanity in order to attain the heights of wealth and power, I would rather just be content with what I have. This realization has been brought to me by my Taoist pondering and my renewed interest in reading. This renewed interest has taken me back to the days when I could while away entire summers just reading, entire weekends and evenings jaunting through other lands, and making myself happy. I'm reading again, and its making me just as happy as I was then, and as my workload gets in the way of my happiness, I come to understand that wealth and power are not at all important, and that only happiness is important. I owe it to myself to stop my ambitions from taking over my life. I need to understand that the things that matter tend not to have anything to do with material wealth at all, and that no matter how much I own or know, all that really matters is how comfortable I am in my own skin. I still need to be able to take care of myself, and my own. That much college will take care of. A degree is a degree, and I can find work when I need to if I pick a degree that will give me a valuable skill. I find that I have a renewed desire to achieve bodily excellence, because a man is made of his body and his soul, not just one or the other. Balance, I think, is key. And I want to strive for simplicity and happiness now more than ever.