One of the big debates in popular culture is over whether you can "follow your bliss" and survive in the world, or whether most people will always have to do things for work that make them unhappy. The former is generally adopted by the far left of the US political spectrum, while everybody else accepts some version of the latter, with some exceptions.
I believe what the debate boils down to, is over how important decisions should be made in an individual's life. One side (the majority) says fear and caution should always take precedence. If that paralyzes you, just do what other people do.
The other side believes positive motivation is important for real success. And indeed, how can anyone who is unhappy consider themselves successful? In order to consider themselves relatively successful, they have to disbelieve the possibility of being happy. Everyone knows on some level that they can be happy. I believe that is so, because of the phenomenon of newborn infants "failure to thrive" if they are not held in someone's arms and given human love a certain amount of time each day. It makes sense to me that love and happiness are a necessary foundation for physical life.
Following the practical thinking of the one's society is certainly (or at least probably) safer. Of the minority who take more risks to do what they want, a higher percentage are dead at the end of each year, than others. That makes it an open-and-shut case for most people. Only people who have less fear controlling them than others, can take such risks.
Great post! "Doing" of course always refers to something that will provide a living income. However much I might like to be a "kept man" and just look after the kids and volunteer for organizations that interest me, that has not been my lot. Then it comes down to having the luck and the creativity (mostly luck, I think) to be able to find or create some paying situation that utilizes one's talents in a satisfying way, so that one can find joy in one's work. Those are perhaps the people who become rich -- those who the more they work, the more they get inspired, they inspire and provide work for others, work more, get more inspired and so on.
ReplyDeleteThe rest of us must find the pain we like best or feel least an accept it, until its effects, unseen, accumulate, and compell us to die.
Or, as some have said, keep work in its own little compartment, and live the rest of our lives in another compartment, fueled by the income supplied by the first compartment.
More on that model perhaps later...