The Junkyard That We Call “Life”
The junkyard is huge. From a distance, huge walls surround the entire place isolating it from whatever exists outside. The place is full of all sorts of broken pieces, rotten metals, electronic boards, and old unwanted stuff.
Walking around the parameters of this place, I found that there is no way out of this scrapyard. Then, dozens of questions started to creep into my mind. What am I supposed to do in a place like this? Is this one of those crazy tests of the academy? Am I supposed to clean & fix all this mess? Well, I don’t think I can even if I dedicate my entire life to it, so what now?
“This is the job market,” is the first thing my eyes landed on the minute I finished asking. The letters were a bit scrubbed, but the sign was as clear as daylight.
“So this is it, huh?”… “I guess that there’s nothing we can do about it then.”
Around the scrapyard, some tall junk towers exist. The tallest I’ve been to so far helped me scout the area better. Being on high ground with half-broken binoculars for quite some time can eventually pay off. I managed to draw a simple map of what I assume to be my new workshop. And as a bonus, I also got a glimpse of what’s outside my junkyard, and I must admit, it is quite intriguing.
Outside my premises, other concealed junkyards exist with different people in them. Each person seemed to gather & play around with certain pieces and parts. Upon close examination, it seemed that all my neighbours are busy working on particular projects with variable but remarkable success. The natural thing to do was to make contact with the rest of the people out there, and so it was.
Using morse code with the reflection of the sun on a mirror, I managed to make contact with a neighbour. The guy explained that he was there for quite some time now and that all we can do is to get ourselves busy doing what we excel at, fixing stuff using what we learned at the academy, and trying to make a profit out of it. The better we get at fixing stuff, the more noticeable we get, the higher our chances to get better tools, better junk, and more profit.
The results of my small investigation bothered the hell out of me at first. After all, those people out there have achieved something while all I have been doing so far is wandering around and about the junk. So, I decided to do something about it and busy myself since there is no way out of the junkyard. But the place is massive, so where shall I start?
Full of enthusiasm and hope, I spent the first few months of my stay in the junkyard trying to do all sorts of things:
I walked around the entire scrapyard multiple times gathering everything I considered to be of use. After getting a whole pile of junk in front of my shelter, I started classifying them into different categories according to the many projects I had in mind.
Truth to be said, I am interested in many pieces, actually in most of the pieces in my junkyard to be quite frank, which makes it harder to decide upon which project to start with. Consequently, I wasted valuable time here and about doing some here, little there, a bit everywhere with little to no result whatsoever. My mood, then, quickly shifted from super excitement with high hopes to gloomy desperation since nothing actually worked. Then, I thought that I am certainly doing something wrong. Therefore, I decided to climb my long tower again to spy on others and see what went wrong with my execution.
Upon careful examination, I was astonished to discover that most people out there are laser-focused on one thing in particular and no more. At first, I thought that maybe I am better since I can juggle different things at once. I am a multitasker. Yet, the same pattern seemed to repeat itself over and over again.
None of my fellow neighbours seems to bother fixing the entire junkyard where they’re at, and none of them is working on two projects at once. So, I started to think that maybe I am at fault here to think that I can actually clean the entire mess in my scrapyard. Looking once again at my neighbours, it hit me suddenly that maybe there are actually doing more by doing less.
Focusing on one thing at a time allowed them to pour all their attention & energy into completing and polishing one thing (be it a bicycle, a car, a toaster, hair trimmer, or whatever) to the point of excellence at a faster rate.
From up the tower, I looked down at the mess I have been doing down there and how little I managed to achieve. I got furious, but at least I knew what was wrong. I sat there thinking about what to focus on, what to invest time & effort doing without getting bored or tired. Yet, nothing showed up! I looked back at the junk I had been busy with and it sparked no joy. Then, I remembered that I have spent plenty of time studying till I graduated as a language engineer. Looking once again at the junk below, I was perplexed since none of it was relevant to my domain of expertise.
“Alright, let’s spy some more!!”, I said to myself.
To be continued
