“The tragedy of life is that sometimes we get what we want.”

S. Maugham

A man went home from work and he was absolutely sure that he was the unhappiest person in the whole World. It was raining and his shoes were wet, he was in a bad mood and there were a lot of grey houses around. He thought that he must be the unluckiest man. He wasn’t betrayed by friends, he had a nice job, but he thought and thought about his fate and grew older with every day. He had a lot of wishes and plans but he had never tried to make them come true. So… he thought: “I want to be a doctor… but I can’t because entrance exams will take me a lot of time and energy!!” He always hesitated and he never tried to begin.

I heard the phrase once: “You need your life just to live”. But I have never understood what it meant. I thought: “I am living… and it’s natural. It must be so”. And now I think that it is a tragedy of life that we really don’t think about our life as a great gift of God. It’s a real tragedy when we waste our life in vain… and we think at the same time that we are living. Let’s keep in mind our man who was walking and thinking about his life. He had a lot of wishes and plans but he didn’t make them come true. Why? Because he was happy. He was absolutely glad to be unhappy, to think about it, to be sad, to be wet, to be dull. He wanted to be in a bad mood. I think that it’s a real tragedy of his life that he got what he wanted. He wanted to live in such a way. Do you think that he was a victim of circumstances? No, he wasn’t. He had nice friends, a good job and other pleasant things. He didn’t want to do anything.

I think that the phrase “You need a life just to live” should be understood in a wider content. What is our life? May be it’s an idea and an opportunity. The idea of our life and the opportunity to live. That’s simple! But we are very complex! We want something other than what we have all the time. And sometimes our wishes make us unhappy because we don’t need things which we want to get. But another kind of wish makes us better. It’s when we work for the result. But at the same time when we get it, we feel worn out and deprived of an idea. And it can make us unhappy, but we can find another idea.

I tried to have a look at this problem from different angles. The first angle is our unconscious choice. The second one is the lack of understanding of what we need. The third one is the absence of an idea. All these points can make us unhappy and a cause of tragedy in our life. But I am not as pessimistic as S. Maugham and I think that we can create our life. We can try to make our life more interesting, fruitful and positive.