Not a perfect analogy, but you get the point? We can do things for ourselves without external pressures that force us out of the comfortable but unfulfilling places that we find ourselves. That's what I'm trying to say, and did so in roughly two and a half hours around midnight, so I hope you enjoy this, and my apologies for any oddities that may have slipped in.
Feel free to tell me what you thought of it, I'd quite like to know.
We Control Our Lives by Mackinley Clevinger, February 20, 2016
There is a prevalent idea in our modern culture that often acts as a mental roadblock to many of us, halting our lives from progressing due to its emplacement by a common theme in much of today’s fictional works; the idea that someone or something will, inevitably, come along in our lives and give us meaning. That the purpose we’ve been seeking and waiting for will show up one day and make everything better; that all the disappointments from not doing anything that makes us feel alive will be lifted from us, and all we have to do is wait for that life-changing day.
It’s a nice thought, and the idea that something better is coming in the future can help us during difficult times, but this idea doesn’t help us if we hold on to it all the time. There is not a secret organization out there that is waiting for some arbitrary day to tap you on the shoulder, tell you what’s actually important in life, and give you a task that you can dedicate your entire life towards. We are not all going to go through a life-changing disaster that puts our lives into focus when confronted with our own mortality, making us live out the rest of our years doing what we love instead of whatever it was we did before. These things aren’t going to happen to us, and yet we spend so much of our lives banking on this theoretical future to hold all of our life’s fulfillment, doing things we don’t care about and putting our interests second in exchange for the life we just happened to settle into first.
We make stories that dream of being forced to enter into another life with more meaning than the mundane one we fear leaving, giving us a clear image to aspire and work for without any of the blame if things go wrong. Stories where we’re pulled out of our regular world and thrust into a fantastical one, full of the joy and mystique that our old lives were missing; meaning given to us and accepted as we integrate into a better life. These are similar to the stories we hear about real people who, after a brush with death or similar incident that puts their life in perspective, turn their lives around and do what makes them happy instead of what lets them get by. Both of these leave us with the message that someone or something will give us a purpose or force us to live for ourselves, and that all we have to do is to wait for its inevitable coming, taking the path of least resistance.
Nothing is coming in our lives to do that, and there is no reason that we cannot be the changing influence on our lives that we are waiting for. Wasting our lives away, stuck in a job we don’t care about and lacking the drive or inspiration to make the first move in improving our lives; that is the life we live while we wait for the universe to hand us our fulfillment, ignoring, while we bemoan our fate, that we are not forced to live that way; choosing to live a life we dislike while we wait for an unknown event to happen in an unknown amount of time instead of taking responsibility for our lives and happiness, and doing something about it to better ourselves.
Another thing that people often live by is the idea that ‘someday’ we will do the thing that we have a passion for once we reach that magical point in our lives when we start actually enjoying it. We divide our lives into two parts: the before, where we’re wishing for the future, and the time after that mystical moment finally comes and frees us to do everything that we want to be doing. The desk jockey fantasizing of moving on from her work to one day be a chef, or a waiter going through the motions while he dreams of being a poet. Our aspirations are important things to hold on to, but there is no ‘one day’ waiting to happen, or the ‘right time’ coming to give you the perfect opportunity to finally do what you love. Many of the people who have succeeded in doing what they love full-time have done so, not out of luck or the right opportunity, but by making themselves start doing it. Not by waiting for a friend to goad them on, but by knowing what they want, and not letting the grass grow under their feet while they wait around for greener pastures.
To all of us, we need a reminder: We have control of our lives. Yes, there exists a society within which we must abide by some constraints and yes, it isn’t always easy, but we each have a choice in life to make when we find ourselves in the position of having taken an easier road that leaves us unsatisfied with ourselves. We can either hope beyond hope that something jars us out of there so that we get the opportunity to influence which groove we fall back into, or we can pick ourselves up from where we don’t want to be and fight tooth-and-nail to do what we love.
There is, of course, a big issue in ‘just doing what you want’ in the society we exist within. Money. It’s something we need to get by in day-to-day life, and oftentimes the idea of spending all day in your garage with a guitar or a paintbrush is one that leaves you wondering where the money is, whereas that boring desk-job, while wasting your precious time, does pay the bills. Every field of interest, from music to kayaking, has people making money from doing what they love, because no one is alone in their field of interest, and when you have taken your passion to another level and immersed yourself in everything it has to offer, there will be people interested in what you do and willing to pay you for it, either in the teaching of it or another manner of sharing that talent.
It will take time, and it will take effort, but that’s because this is life. There are no shortcuts, no organizations that will show you the way and give you everything you need to succeed, and no convenient miraculous events that force you to reconsider your life. There’s just us, and roughly eighty years to find out what that means. Life doesn’t start tomorrow, it started when we were born, and if you haven’t already, you have to make that life yours so that, more than not having regrets on your death-bed, you can just have a life that was made up of you and your interests, not anybody else’s. If you’re worried about the risks of making that kind of change, think of all the stories of people who turned themselves around years down the line to become happier, successful people. We don’t have to wait forty years to mould our life around our interests, we can do that now, and if money is your biggest concern, remember this quote from author Marsha Sinetar: “Do what you love, and the money will follow.”