Why are you doing what you are doing?

Over the years, I have observed a common behavioral inconsistency from every single person I know: dislike something, but yet continue to bear with it. Cruel reality is the usual interpretation. In plain words, we have no choice but to comply!! For example, in your workplace, you can surely find quite a handful who explicitly and routinely tell you how much they don't like their job and how much they hate their office, but for years they keep staying. Such inconsistent (or even self-conflicting) behavior is also common with many unhappy couples. The apparent reality of helplessness, or so-called the force of circumstances, sounds like a universal excuse for sticking with a self-perceived bad choice. But logically, such force of circumstances really does not rule out choices and hence cannot possibly explain why people insist they have no choice! The fact is that there are choices and some people do take alternative options, like finding a new job, or getting divorced, for instance. So, reality does not always compel you to the dead end.

To overcome this logical insufficiency, I must rule out the force of circumstances being the sole reason for behaving inconsistently. Is there anything else we failed to recognize but have kept influencing us profoundly? One conjecture (also my own apperception) is that every person has something to hope for at any given time, be it hidden or explicitly expressed. This "hope" (or "dream" if you wish to emphasize its unrealistic nature) is always kept in a person's mind that is responsible for driving his behavior. So, if you hate your job but keep staying, you must still have something to hope for. Or while you have so much grievance about a relationship but insist to maintain it, you certainly don't think it is hopeless (as yet). So, you are always hoping to see something happen, however unconsciously. If, one day, you decide that your "hope" has no hope, then you will no longer find it meaningful to stay on the same path. Moreover, if your dream had come true, you would inevitably be forced to change your path, but whether the change of path will be for better or worse is not always known or predictable.

My further conjecture is that hope is the dominating factor that can even trivialize the force of circumstances and any other factors. One may then conclude that the dominating incentive for life is your hope. Having hope is thus almost the sole justification for us to live.¹ Whether or not that hope would become reality is irrelevant!

Now, ask yourself why you are doing what you are doing! The answer must be a dream that you've kept dreaming! You don't have to admit it, neither do you need to tell anyone about it. To put this theory to practice, we simply need to keep hoping at any time, and that's enough to keep you going to the very last moment.

May 30, 2017

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¹A dramatic expression by comedian Stephen Chow essentially said the same thing: 人如果沒有夢想，那跟鹹魚有什麼分別 - 周星馳《功夫》

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