About goals and passions

Day 264 / 365

There’s a style in writing known as “stream of consciousness”. In it, the author would just write words that represent the train of thought of a character, often without any punctuations or structure. I thought that I’ll try doing a version of that for the blog, that is to write down stuff that’s going on in my head.

I find writing really therapeutic. There are times when things seem really overwhelming and my brain is worrying about dozens of problems simultaneously. In that case, I have found simply writing down the problems extremely helpful.

But wasn’t this blog supposed to be about learning new things? Well, it’s not necessary to seek external sources to learn new stuff. You can learn a lot from introspection as well.

So getting back to the topic at hand. The problem I see is this — There is the thing that you want to do that you are passionate about. You know in your heart that doing the thing will make you happy. Even if it doesn’t, you know it’s worth a try.

But there’s this other thing. The thing that you are actually doing. Not because you want to, but just because you lived your life in a certain way and followed a certain path that you saw others follow and here you are. Stuck in a cubicle thinking what in the hell you are doing with your life.

Now if you were watching a movie, and the hero was facing the same dilemma, you would know that obviously the hero should leave the job and follow his dream. You would feel happy and excited when you see him handing the resignation letter. You would later see him broke and struggling, but you would keep watching. You know there is hope for him.

Yet in real life, you would never hand in that resignation letter. Why would you? In the unknown territory there lie great failures and great successes. Scared of the failures, you keep living in your little average cubicle, daydreaming about the successes.

Although the responsibility of following his dreams lies with an individual, I strongly believe that it would help if the other people were a bit supportive. If you had enough money saved to say take a year off and travel, you still wouldn’t do it. And one of the things that will hold you back would be — what would my parents say? How will I face them if I am unemployed? what would others say to them about their son/daughter being unemployed?

They say you should be the change you want to see in the world. So I would ask everyone to support that friend who wants to leave his job and become an actor. If you are a parent, then encourage your child to pursue their dreams. We should aim to create an environment where following your passion should be praised, people should not be afraid to work towards their goals.

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — Life without the moon