Past few entries:

I suck, you suck, everything sucks - 2005-03-17

Hurray! - 2005-02-22

Good year coming - 2005-02-10

Fat - 2005-01-27

Bleh - 2005-01-11

Other lovely places to visit:

Andrew
Dave
Diaryland
Hangtime
Jackson
Jeffy
Loobylu
Lurgee
Marn
Neonjunkie
Out of order
She speaks good english
Spacegirl
Tanzy
Velcrometer

2004-04-28

We started reminiscing about the last tutor we had in our seminar group today. She's a successful surgeon and has done multiple degrees in her career (the walls in her office are covered with them). She seems really dedicated to her work and seems to get a lot of job satisfaction from what she does.

But then we started talking about her personal life. The rumour is that she's single and owns a huge house in a posh neighbourhood in Toronto. People in the group started saying that they wondered whether she was happy. To me, she always appeared to be an upbeat and content person. Someone else piped in that she was always cracking jokes and laughing even while in surgery. So then it came down to the fact that she was in the mid to late 30s but was still single. Someone cracked a joke about how she might be laughing at work and then going home to cry in her big mansion at night.

Is this how we define happiness to be now? That to be fully happy and successful in your life, you have to be married or in a long term relationship? Maybe I'm naive (or just been single for too long), but I would like to think that happiness isn't fully defined by whether or not you have a significant other.

This conversation reminded me of a discussion at Mel's house awhile ago. We were talking about whether we would settle for someone subpar out of desperation because we had hit our 30s and still didn't have the idealized wife/husband, two kids, dog, and house with a white picket fence. I said that I wouldn't because I'm used to being alone (a lifetime of experience from being a single child) and settling for companionship wouldn't be fair to either person. (Plus someone like that would likely get on my nerves very quickly.) And I had friends to depend on. But then she said that she didn't think that would happen because everyone gets lonely and friends just can't fill that gaping spouse-shaped hole.

I don't even know where I'm going with this anymore. Anyway, I just think it's strange that all of these people who are pursuing really challenging and tough careers would define their own happiness by whether or not they are in a romantic relationship. If that's the only criteria for personal success, why even bother to work so hard in the rest of your life when you can just work hard at finding a partner?

While I think relationships are great and can be such a bonus in life, I would like to hope that I will always define my own personal fulfillment by whether or not I have made some good use of my time and I can love myself at the end of the day for all my own faults, without a reinforced reflection from someone's else's eyes.