one other thing

One other thing that made me suddenly loose hold of normality was when I started thinking about growth paths.

I found that reasons for happiness at a very significant number of situations is when people have been able to grow along their self defined growth paths. A person working in the cafe will be happy when he gets a job in a bigger, more properous cafe. A social worker will be happy when he will get to do social service in a more poor area. We will be more happy when we get higher posts within the company. Bill Gates will be happy when he posts higher growth this year than last year.

A wife will feel happy when she will be able to better manage the house, and make her child fare better at school. Grandpa will feel happy when he is able to see his grandchildren excel in life.

So the growth paths being subjectively defined, they loose all absolute meaning. So I suddenly felt that growth was a not a good reason for feeling happy. Then suddenly my whole growth path vanished under my legs. And I felt that keeping a job is not very important. Since I can change my growth path later.

When I saw my manager trying to perform well in his job, I said -- "hey look he is trying to become senior manager now". When my colleagues performed well,I said hey look this guy wants to become the manager. This with everybody. Then suddenly growth feels very non-absolute and not-the-most-important-thing.