The society, your family and the larger miserable universe wants you to settle down. But what use is settling down, if you aren’t happy? Don’t settle down, till you find your joy. Stay unsettled.
We will start this post with the immortal words of Steve Jobs:
Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So, keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
I would also highly recommend that you watch his Stanford Commencement Speech if you haven’t. It is one of the finest talks ever delivered in human history:
Now, let us get started.
What does it mean to settle down?
To settle down, means not having to make a decision about something.
Settling down means to stay in the same place with decisions you have taken. This could mean settling down with a life partner or with a job or a career. If you have settled down, that means you are unlikely to change.
It is a good thing to settle down if you are happy.
However, it’s an awful thing to settle down if you are not happy.
My problem with the large chunk of our society is that most people settle down with compromises, survival and misery. They accept that that is life, and don’t fight back.
Why don’t people fight back? You may say fight for what? Fight for their happiness. Why don’t people fight for their happiness?
I don’t know. They should fight for their happiness. If more and more people fight for their happiness, more people will talk about it, and a miserable life won’t be so acceptable anymore in the society, like it is, right now.
I am saying don’t settle down till you find your happiness. Steve Jobs was right. He was a genius in every way.
Why is it important to settle down?
It is important to settle down because you see when you settle down, you don’t have to make decisions anymore. I have settled with the idea that I am a writer, although I don’t make any money being a writer, right now. But it defines my identity and, in that sense, I have settled down.
What does it mean to settle down in a relationship or a marriage?
To settle down in a relationship or settling down in a marriage means you are out of the relationship market, and are not looking out anymore. You don’t have to make decisions about who to date or who to marry.
You are done, well, till your marriage lasts, which hopefully is forever.
What does it mean to settle down in a career?
It means that you have chosen a career where you now intend to spend most of your time. You don’t have to make a new decision about which career path to choose anymore. You are doing fine because you are settled with a career that you have chosen.
What does it mean to settle down in a place?
To settle down in a place means you don’t want to move anywhere else physically. For example, you may have settled in New York or London or Paris, or wherever else you have chosen your base to be, given the options you had.
Once you have made that decision, you are done with where to live. You have settled in your mind. If you are happy with it, it’s great to settle down.
The problem with settling down before you are happy
Most people and I use the word most carefully, most people have settled with misery. That is my problem withs settling down. We don’t wait till we find the right partner or right career for us. We settle down, because we are in a rush to settle down. Everyone around you is settling down in a marriage with kids, and a stable career, even if it sucks life out of them.
So, you rush to settle down. In the course of rushing to settle down, you make your life permanently miserable. You see, once you have decided that you have settled, it gets quite hard to change intellectually and physically.
If you have settled in an unhappy marriage, you wouldn’t do anything because after all, you have settled down, and the pain is a part of the deal.
If you have a settled down in a meaningless career, most of your life has become meaningless because you don’t find any joy from your work. You have settled, and the meaningless is a part of the deal.
Hey, UNSETTLE NOW, till you find your happiness
Now, I am coming to the point of the post. Fuck settling down and fuck society that keeps telling you to settle down. Why should you settle down when you are not ready to settle down?
Get unsettled. Don’t accept that life is pain and misery. It is not. Life cannot be a compromise, pain and misery. We must not accept that. Be unsettled.
Life is not meant for survival
Fuck survival. Die instead. I mean, don’t die, fine, but if you are not happy at all with the state of your life, and you feel you are merely surviving, please do something about it.
We are not cattle. Cattle survives, and one day, dies.
We are human beings. We are meant to be happy.
Do not settle down with survival.
Do not settle down with meaningless relationships or painful marriages. UNSETTLE
You settle down in a painful relationship because you think it would be too painful to come out of it. But, consider the possibility that you may be happier on the other side, which is not even a possibility if you stick with the relationship.
You are letting the fear of the unknown take over the familiarity of pain.
If your marriage or relationship gives you nothing but pain, get out of it. You are better by yourself. It is FAR better to be alone, than in a painful marriage or a painful relationship.
Do not settle down in a painful marriage or relationship because the society expects you to do so.
Break up, or take a mutual divorce gracefully, and see if you can find someone whom you love and respect. If you can’t, you are better alone, then in a horrible life sucking relationship. You don’t need anyone to suck the happiness that you could at least have by yourself. The point of marriage or a romantic relationship is to add to that happiness. If it doesn’t, you don’t need it. Marriage, or relationships aren’t necessary to exist or to be happy. If they don’t add to our happiness, they mean nothing.
Do not settle down in a painful career. UNSETTLE
A life that’s spent waiting for weekends is wasted by a proportion of about 70% (5/7th) to be precise.
If you hate your job, it’s simple. You are wasting most of your life. Why have you settled down with it?
I know, it sounds far easier than said. Let’s say you are 40 years old now and have a family that you love, but have been stuck in a job you hate for a few years. You know you are good at some art form but it’s a risk to quit your job and go after your dreams. So, you stay settled with the job you hate because it pays your bills. You let it kill you slowly, every day.
What if you explode one day, and everything falls apart? If that happens, everything you hold dear, would amount to nothing. So, unsettle a bit, and start slowly leaning into what makes you happy. If you don’t, you are just a simmering volcano that will burst out one day, leaving nothing but ashes.
Do not settle down with things that give you pain
Do not settle with pain. Keep working on getting rid of it, and move towards your happiness. You are meant to be happy. That is the purpose of life- your happiness. Only happy people can share happiness with others, because they have learnt to be happy themselves.
When is it a good thing to settle down?
Hey, it’s great to settle down when you are happy.
Settle down with work that enriches you and gives you meaning, and money of course, to keep doing what you love.
Settling down with a partner you love, and who loves you would multiply your life and your happiness.
You can also settle down with music you love. I recently made a playlist on Amazon music, which I have settled with. It’s full of music I have loved from the time I was a child to now. I have settled with that playlist, and do not have to look for new music lists every day.
Settle down with food you love. It takes a while to understand the kinds of food you like. But once you have arrived at a list of foods you love, you don’t have to struggle with the question “what to eat” every day. No decisions have to be made.
You see, once you have found joy, which is the purpose of this happiness blog, you don’t have to make new decisions. You are settled. But I can bet that 90% of the people in this world or in the history of human life, never reached this point.
They just settled with misery, which is something I don’t want myself to do or you to do. You are seeking happiness. That’s why you are here.
Unless you have found your happiness in each area of your life, please don’t settle down. I want you to do this instead, no matter what anyone thinks.
Unsettle
Unsettle your life, till you find happiness.
The culture, especially, Indian culture reminds us to settle down in our personal and professional lives as soon as possible. So, people rush to settle down, and in the rush, they take whatever life has on offer.
They settle with quick money, which comes in the form of jobs, instead of taking the time to explore and understand themselves what they really love, and then choosing jobs and careers basis that understanding.
They settle with partners they don’t even love, because they are in a rush to settle down, given that’s what society and their families respect. We haven’t been taught to chase our own happiness, and so we don’t.
Unsettle and find your joy. If you need to take some drastic decisions to drive your life in the direction of your happiness, then you must take those decisions. You don’t want to explode one day like a volcano, and you will, if you keep suppressing everything that makes you happy.
Unsettle with pain, and do not settle till you find your happiness.
In Conclusion– Unsettle
We know that millions of people around the world have settled down with pain and misery. They don’t find a moment of happiness in their everyday lives, and they hope one day, they would be happy when they retire. By then, life will be gone and you won’t have much time left to be happy.
So, unsettle and find your happiness, while you still can.
Why do I write this happiness blog?
The purpose of this blog is to help you find your happiness. Please read the other posts on the blog, and follow so that you get updates when new posts are published. Please share the post with your friends so that they can also find their happiness. If you have any feedback for me, please leave it in the comments and I would be happy to work on it. If you would like to support my writing and this blog, you may please send a donation through PayPal here.
I appreciate the time you spent in reading the blog and wish you happiness.
Love,
Amarvani
If you enjoyed this post, maybe you would like to read this one as well:
great article.