You can't have it all!

May be it's just me, an un-ambitious person, but I've always felt that one of the reason that I think I'm happy is because I believe that you CAN'T have it all. All you can do is figure out what's most important to you and work on that, everything else is gravy. Trying to have it all in itself is not a bad thing, what it does however is put so much stress on us to try to attain/maintain it all, that we get too tired and/or too stressed out to enjoy ourselves even if we do manage to have it all.

Sometimes the things that we want don't go well with each other. It's like wanting a 2-seat convertible that you can drive your family of 4 around in, it just doesn't go together. Or wanting a powerful V8 car that gets 40 mpg, it doesn't exists (at least not yet). If we aren't "reasonable" about these wants, we will never find what we're looking for.

Sometimes the things we want can go together, but requires so much effort to attain that we can't even enjoy ourselves once we attain it. Like the mother/career choice that some women have to make. Some are able to do both, and enjoy themselves, but a lot of folks aren't able to do that. Either the demands from work is too stressful, or the rewards of taking care of the kids isn't apparent enough, or doing both well requires so much energy from you that you can't even take some time to relax and enjoy yourself and your accomplishments. This is where/when you need to sit down and decide what's important and cut back on the other stuff, if only to save your happiness and sanity.

Should the fact that other people are able to "have it all" while you can't make you feel bad? I say no, we are all different (different values, different tolerance, different temperment). the only thing we can do is make ourselves happy with our situation, whatever that is.

I'm not saying don't have dreams, I'm just saying that if you're out there chasing your dreams and if you find that even if you achieve your goals/dreams and you are still unhappy, may be you just need to slow down and figure out what it is that makes you happy.

Anyway, hopes this rambling haven't gotten completely incoherent.