It's yet another day. After work, bored, tired and just plainly uninterested in anything. You're there, in your home, just passing time, waiting for the night to arrive, when you lower your wary head into the soft pillow to repeat the routine the next day. Most things seem pointless, even your hobbies are becoming distant to you, subsequently your life is becoming indistinguishable from the mess it has become. On the outside, you seem to live a normal life, on the inside the pressure cooker is about to explode at any minute.
What's at fault here? When you look at it rationally, you quickly discover that nothing is actually wrong. You have a job, you might still go to school, you have a home, you have a partner...but what's with this nagging feeling of unfulfillment which begins slowly, but grows like cancer and invades your thoughts and emotions?
You're a human being and I know at least we have that in common. And I'm pretty sure that we share another thing, which is passion. It's the fundamental human drive, which pushes us into particular directions and makes us forget about everything else going on around us. That passion differs from person to person; for some it's fishing, or stamp collecting, computer engineering, solving puzzles, dancing, playing an instrument, music, making art, drawing, painting, sculpting, writing, decorating, advising, teaching, photography, promoting, reading, selling, buying, creating, innovating etc etc etc. The list is as long as there are people on this planet, and it's probably even beyond that.
What that passion is for you, only you can tell. Only you can figure that out for yourself... There is no person on this planet Earth who can tell you what makes you tick, what ignites that spark within you, there's no one who can or should tell you what your passion is. It's yours to find, yours to mold, yours to evolve...
So I'm sure by now you are already thinking about that passion in your life, that thing which makes you feel the happiest and fulfilled. So what's the problem, why don't you pursue it fully and completely, why don't you dedicate your life to it?
Many factors; first, for most of these passions, financial stability is not assured. Most of these interests don't bring food on the table or pay the bills. Second, a very common experience, is fear. Fear of not being good enough, of being average, fear of not living up to anything, fear of letting yourself down. Third, the feeling of not having anything new to offer in your particular interest, the feeling of not having anything new to contribute, just being a number even within the field you love most. And last would be the fear that the passion would disappear if it became work, if it became common or everyday.
Fear, fear, fear, fear, fear. You get lost within all the ways it could go wrong. You forget the passion, leave it behind, because there's too many ways for it to go completely sideways and become tragic. You forget it and live with a small hope, that somehow, someday it might happen or that in a parallel universe you're living out your true life. You trade the dream for plastic gadgets, cheap technology, comfortable furniture and a "stable" life.
But, in reality, what are you doing? What are we doing? All the people we admire, we cherish and look up too the most, are the people who said NO to the fear, and lived out what they felt most strongly for. The truth is that the laziness we feel day to day is not only contributed by our everyday lives, but also from the overwhelming feeling of being pushed down by the monotonous routine we accepted because the route was safer. It was predictable and therefor easier to follow.
But it's the surest ticket to hell. No burning flames, lakes of lava or demons, just the internal hell of living a boring, unfulfilling, monotonous existence which slowly kills you. The life where you are not living, just killing time. And is it worth it? If we lived for a thousand or ten thousand years, then maybe I'd say yes, it's a long time and the stability is worth it, taking it easier and safer is better...maybe I'd say that. But we'll live for another 50 years if we're lucky! And that's a big if. Personally I don't want to wake up one day, with a huge sense of regret because I didn't follow my emotions, my passions and drives, because I saw the stable existence as more beneficial. Maybe that's the third thing we share as humans,...I sure hope we do.
In the end, no matter what you do, you share that passion, no matter what it is. There is nothing sexier on any human being than seeing that person fully entrenched in what they're doing, fully engulfed by the thing they love, seeing them with the sparkle in the eye when they talk about it, discuss it, share it. What world are we leaving for our children if we throw away our dreams? No mother or father wants to see their child unhappy, and the children always follow by example. So if we want to see the change in the world, we have to be the change in the world. The risks are worth it, the uncertainty of it is worth it, the unpredictability of it is worth it. Otherwise we're just pretending. Not even acting, just pretending, trying to fool ourselves. And we can't, not for long...
"If you end up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it." - Frank Zappa
