Saturday, February 7, 2009

Happiness and Regrets

One of the tv shows I enjoy watching is "House".  I was catching up on this week's episode tonight and had to write down this line as it seemed rather poignant.  The plot focuses on a woman who was a top cancer researcher and left her career to do something that would make her happy over something that she felt she "should" be doing.  Towards the end of the episode she's talking to one of the dr.'s treating her and he remarks that he often thinks about what he will regret when he's lying on his deathbed reflecting on his life.  She answers him, "You're going to spend one day of your life on your deathbed.  It's the other 25,000 we should worry about.  Go to bed happy tonight."

I often have to remind myself that no one will look back on my life after I die and say, "Gosh, she was a great Business Analyst." or "She really had a knack for redoing templates at work and project management."  At least I really hope that's not what I'm remembered for.  I'd hope that people look back on my life as being a good mother, wife, and kind person.  I'd like to believe that those things I do outside of my 40 hours a week at work make an impact on others and at the same time make me happy.

I would love to find a job that I could also count in the makes me happy column, but I'm not sure I'm ready for that leap yet.  For now I content myself with enjoying the people I work with (well most of them anyway).  

I do think I'll have regrets in the end; I'm guessing most people do.  I hope though that if I can confine them to the part of my life that falls lowest on the totem pole of overall importance that it won't be so bad.
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2 comments:

  1. ZazzyFebruary 7, 2009 at 9:24 PM

    I was thinking about this week, too. Somewhere, I read a quote that said, in effect, I don't want to get to the end of my life to have people say, "she fit into her jeans." It's hard for me to figure out exactly what matters - work matters for certain reasons, of course. I think that what you spend a third of your adult life doing ought to make you happy and be more than a paycheck. I don't know how to make that happen yet.

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  2. MomFebruary 7, 2009 at 9:45 PM

    I find a lot lately that I contemplate what I would do work-wise to make that third of my life happier. There's an idealistic voice in my head that says I should drop everything and go back to school to start over. Then the realistic voice runs through my list of responsibilities and the money of course never adds up. I'm now at the point of needing to explore what I can do within my career path that would make me happy. It's the golden handcuffs dilemma.

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