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And you, What’s your red dot?

It seems possible to picture the evolution of an individual mindset on graphical curves, constantly ascending or descending up and down tendencies and beliefs.

Imagine, you are always going through an overall average tendency, of course at some point, punctual in time, you can be at odds with it but in general just as in any natural phenomenon, we can average the bumps into a steady line and providing sufficient sampling into a general tendency.


Time playing the averaging factor, let’s explore 2 of those curves that depicts my current transformation into a freer lifestyle.


One I would call the mindset curve to make it broad enough though it covers only 3 concepts that for me go hand in hand to light the way forward: Optimism vs pessimism, Idealist vs Cynical, Romantic vs Down-to-Earth. Now I am not emitting judgment here, all of these terms, even when some sound more negative than others, have their own intrinsic value to tackle today’s world. Over-Optimism is just being a plain blind fool, over-idealist is naïve, over-cynical is counter-productive and prevents going forward,…etc.

Conventionally, you would start life as a blank slate and in the protective cocoon of your family nucleus, you grow up fed with fairy tales and children games. You therefore start way up the Optimism curve and your brain is literally brainwashed into an idealistic romantic world full of inexperienced concepts.

When times come to start a career, the economy pushes you into precarious jobs first, internships for instance to collect enough experience and pretend to a more stable work position later on. So you start low on the career curve and if all goes according to the conventional scheme, you go up the curve. The way up isn’t necessarily a move up the hierarchy, it concerns more the stability which always comes with reduced freedom with regards to your own time and your own brain space. To make it simple, down the orange curve, you have precarious yet fully free-choice jobs and up the curve you have the unlimited work contract 9-to-5 jobs.


Your mindset curve in the meanwhile goes down, life experience being what it is, you realize life isn’t all fairy tales and blue skies and fair winds. There are moments when things go wrong, when wishes don’t come true, when you fall sick or your loved one leaves. Depending on how lucky you are that curve is steep and harsh or a gentle caring slope that lets you roll without trauma to that red point.


That red point is when you reach that moment when your mindset is ready to settle with the negatives of your job and appreciates its relative freedom and constraints it brings forth. A balance, an equilibrium point, your very own.


Still following? I hope so!


I started in life fed with the same stories of course but the economy being what it is at the time and the cultural gap existing between my parents combined to create a fairly unoptimistic environment. My first image of a couple is one of arguing over lack of money, of constant nagging and unhappy faces. Yet things improved later down the road and we went from a rather unhappy, fight-for-surviving, live-the-real-life family into a solid, happier, full-comfort, protected-expatriate-bubble kind of life. Those stories I was fed durably marked my mind yet were at first in contradiction with my life experience of the moment. My blue curve started rather at a low point and went up with life experience becoming softer and more comfortable with time.


When it comes to career, I found a stable job as soon as I finished my studies, kept it, stayed with it, changed for an even more stable job until today where I drastically dropped into no job at all with a wish to succeed in maintaining this newly experienced freedom.


My curves would look something more like this

I used to think, and still sometimes when I have set-backs, that humans are a parasite to the Earth, vermin to be eradicated without much added value. I started out not being very romantic, playing around, not really believing while all the while fighting with these crazy fairy tales that were stuck in my mind. You would think getting your heart broken a few times would make you less of a romantic and more of a realistic even borderline disillusioned person. Well it didn’t happen for me, through time, I felt even more the strength of my feelings and how much they can fulfill a life, discovering what I couldn’t see as a child, how love can make life so much sweeter than anything I have ever tasted, isn’t that romantic hey? More recently, I do start to believe, just as I feel it in the people around me too, that it is possible to make a change for the better, as humans, as individuals, for the planet, little pockets of contagious joy here and there that are dotting the world with a new kind of disease, that of the scream of our life essence, of our smiles and our strength of will, ready to prove that the world can be a better place. Perhaps a day will come that these various dynamic little pockets will be so strong and numerous, that just as water droplets join each other, they will create one big protective bubble around the Earth, closing the distance between themselves and encompassing everyone. One can dream!


And my red dot? Well that’s my target. My dream, find a way to live out of little jobs, missions, temporary things that I am lucky enough to select and chose in areas that I love or will love, no fixed locations, no fixed time constraints, no fixed activities, let’s make my work to the image of these multiple creative various initiatives that dot the world to make it better, let’s dot this straight line career, make it dotted, full of space in between for living and loving and smiling and time for breathing and enjoying my time on this Earth. That’s my red dot.


And you? What is your red dot?

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