I often find myself thinking of the seemingly unlimited possibilities life holds. What is the best possible alternative to the many inevitable obligations that come with adulthood? Becoming part of this grand machine that is our society and our economy should not mean spending the majority of your productive life doing one given thing, not because you enjoy that thing, but in order to keep food in the cupboard and four protective walls around you. It should not mean tossing ambition aside for security. I dread the thought of working long hours at a mindless and unnecessary job just to keep alive. Such a world appears cold and unforgiving. Instead, I see my future place in this world as a collection of possibilities, beyond a life that is not really living, but surviving. I’m not sure if it is that many people are content in their cubicles, or they simply do not realize there are alternatives. In no way do I see myself as above the masses, but I often feel that I see things a bit differently.
My line of thinking is on par with such cheesy inspirational phrases repeated by professors and advertisements for non-traditional colleges. “Follow your passion!”, they say. “Live your dream” and my personal favorite of “Live to work, don’t work to live”. The message in the mantra being, that if you can find a way to get paid for what you love, it no longer feels like work. But, the barrier that immediately arises, is money. How does one sustain a living from making art, playing music, playing sports or acting. We've all heard of the starving artist, whom, at any given time, may or may not make enough money from their passion to feed themselves. These professions are highly competitive; success stories will leave you feeling inspired, but with the advice that you must work hard, and you must not give up.
But for the rest of us, who have hobbies, but may not be particularly talented, patient or determined enough to turn passion into profit, we give in. We compromise for jobs with little purpose, leaving us too exhausted to do much more than sleep in the bed in the house that we’re working so hard to live in. So many work long hours, selling a product that leaves even the customer with (in many cases) only superficial, material happiness. Whenever we do get a moment to ourselves, it becomes easier to fill it with short lived happiness that comes from buying new clothes, going out drinking, or watching people whose lives are much more fulfilled than our own on television. This grim and desolate description I've painted in my mind doesn't include the happiness that comes from relationships, having families, spiritual fulfillment, or the possibility that many people happen to love the things they work long hours selling, convincing others that for a fee, they will love the things too. But it does, in many ways, present the catch-22 of our modern world. The very situation I’m always looking for a way out of, in between the many mindless tasks that come with a minimum wage job in food service.
