I feel like I have a strong sense of what is important in life: love, family, friendship… And yet I often cannot help but obsess over work and work-related bullshit. I’m embroiled in this constant internal struggle where I value so many non-work things, and yet because of habit or self-identity or pride, I define myself through work more than through any other thing. My idealistic self is always fighting my pragmatic self. For example, I treasure connections and relationships and authenticity, but when I think about what I have to offer people and the world, I never give weight or value to the time and energy I spend cultivating, protecting, and supporting these things. For whatever reason, those qualities– albeit things I consider strengths and certainly priorities in my life– never feel like legitimate “marketable” or “technical” skills that equate to accomplishment or achievement. I still worry/wonder whether my professional career will ever amount to any kind of true “success” I had once hoped for myself.

This week, I’ve been reflecting heavily on life, death, priorities, and where people choose to spend their precious time. A coworker resigned this week to go back home to care for her dying mother. A friend’s sister was just diagnosed with advanced cancer. The famed Stanford neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi, who wrote about his own personal battle with cancer, passed away this week at 37.

In my younger years, I often struggled with the unfairness of life. Why, as a teenager, did I drive a BMW while an elderly woman near my school walked so far in the rain, lugging her heavy groceries home? As I’ve gotten older, I’ve stopped focusing on fairness. Life doesn’t give a damn about that shit. There are no conditions, no guarantees. Just because you do A, doesn’t mean B will happen. Uncertainty knows no bounds, and fate is really just a crap shoot and roll of the dice.

Knowing all these things, how should we be living? How should we be spending our time? Are we that strongly influenced by societal/cultural expectations and pressures that we must have a house and must work a job? I don’t have any answers. I just know that too many people are unhappy and miserable. And if, in our good years, we can’t seem to figure this shit out, what will happen when fate changes course?