Were we meant to work endlessly to pay our bills, and ignore the beauty of life, wanting to translate it using our own thoughts?
Looking Back
Today, life is not how you imagined it would be 10 years ago. You thought everything would go smooth, without the turmoil of having to choose a career. Did you intend on living for passion and purpose? Or would you align yourself with others’ . We are all oblivious to the slowly shifting changes, like how every continent moves a few inches a year, taking over millions of years to rearrange. In due time, all these little choices or compromises stack endlessly.
It will either push you to a dead end job slowly draining your life away, while burying your passions deeper each year. But it’s still inside you, wanting to surface at every spark.
Living The Unavoidable Endless Cycle
It isn’t that slow, but we can’t ignore the fact that our lives are spent oblivious to a lot of truths. Your life is how you make it, that’s what we’ve been told. But, how many of us actually live up to it? I digress.
You were 17 once, your life felt rather bright, full of unexplored prospects. So much you wanted to do, but you may have put it aside now, a bit extra time for your studies perhaps. Or could it be that moment you spent in pursuit of courtship. Whatever it may be, now you’re 27, or perhaps more.
Being 27, you realize you’ve been in a job for a while now. Nice and stable, pays well. You sit back on your desk and a memory pops up.
“Man I really want to become a musician,” a voice rings in your ear from that time when you really wanted to do something that made you feel so good.
But being a musician doesn’t bring in revenue, neither does your unwaning interest in photography, that makes you click amazing shots, keeping it all to yourself. What you had was art, and the world craves it! But all you did was banking, perhaps a decent office executive at a reputed international organization. Perhaps you wandered around in search of making money, looking for the easiest pick available.
Procrastination is a Prison
Sure I could do my music from time to time, heck I could even come home and write a thing or two. But sometimes the thought of having to sleep early in preparation for work the next day drove the breath out of you, and it never really happened.
Your guitar gathered dust, your writing material strewn across the unrecognizable landscape of your room, which is simply a place you spend sleeping or doomscrolling. From this point of view, it looks like a dystopian lifestyle. The job sucks the life out of you, quenching your thirst with a few drops we call salary.
This hell hole is not how life ends for everyone, this isn’t even an endpoint of a life. You’re just in stasis, with art sleeping deep inside you, sounds cool.
But you probably let that thought slide, thinking it’s okay, I can do it when I am older, until you are, and perhaps now realizing it may or may not be too late for all this. You can still redeem yourself. Looking around your room, perhaps the guitar might come into view.
You pick up the guitar and you dust it off (obviously). All tuned and already playing, you feel like you got this. The chords don’t sound so clear, the strings cutting into your fingers.
The rust has set in, and perhaps I can’t do this. The muscles on my fingers ache, and I can no longer remember how to play that song I used to love. But that doesn’t matter now, because I must sleep and rest to prep myself for the next day.
Stop Everything & Refocus
How many times have we gone round the track, thinking that today will be the day I start on my dreams. Sometimes we simply push it aside as something that was never meant to stick with us. We let art go and dive into the matrix of survival, where we must earn a steady monthly wage which will allow me to pay for my bills and maybe eat at that fancy restaurant.
Nothing is worth it when you realize you don’t even get paid enough for this joke you do every day, it gets monotonous and it gets repetitive, and boring.
Tied Down for Mediocrity
You also have extreme ties to the matrix. Your family, your social circle, and even your livelihood depends on the fact that you get in line and obey orders for a morsel. We all are slaves to the matrix, and at one point we have to break free.
The sad reality of it all lies in knowing that this game of perpetual slavery and subjugation through a system is the natural path of life. You can either be the shepherd or the sheep. The shepherds Benefit from your existence, and you benefit on theirs, to give you your daily feed, and nothing more. But the difference is, you get a fraction of what they get and you are a follower.
Know Where You Stand
I knew from the start that I wasn’t meant to be a follower, even during the childhood I liked to be called a leader, but growing up under zero autonomy, and 100% control has brought my life to a standstill. My nature says become the 1%, my nurture says, follow the shepherds.
But don’t all sheep aim to be the 1%? 99% of people like to think that way, gives them a sense of purpose, self actualisation, if you will. Am I among them? I could be. I could have settled in as a writer, I could have given my everything in achieving the approval of my boss and managers, but I can’t. I can’t make myself like them. I can’t follow, I was coded to lead from the start. But I digress.
The art I practice is for me, and if the world likes it, they can have it. Not everything needs monetary compensation or reward. Sometimes the peace of mind is what the end goal is, while we walk towards our end on this material plain.
Keep Pushing Your Passions
To all the artists I say, do what you love doing. If your hands tremble, keep trying. You’re not bad at it, you’re just out of practice. Do it every day, in small amounts, and it will snowball with every fervent effort. Our jobs are for the sustenance of our body, but our minds’ sustenance is art. Like the most famous quote from a favorite of mine, Dead Poets Society,
“And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love: these are what we stay alive for.”
-John Keating (Robin Williams)
