Sleeping is for Quitters

These days, it's not possible to simply pursue your passion. You have to knock it off it's pedestal, hitch it to a 6 figure salary and drag it through the dust, twist it, paint it a different color, cut corners off of it, and finally forget about it for a while. Then, at the end of the road and after a lifetime of jumping through hoops to reach that carrot tied to the stick, your passion is finally yours, if there's anything left of it - or of the person wanted it in the first place.

It's like when a twelve year old looks up into the night sky and sees a satellite pass by, and thinks to himself, I want to be an astronaut. He's never meant that word "want" more emphatically in his whole life. He wants it with his whole self, and that hour, that minute, he starts doing everything he possible can to make that dream a reality. He doesn't sleep that night. The next day, his dad tells him, "Astronauts are some of the most well educated students in the world," and his report cards from then on are full of a's. "Astronauts need to be athletic," his mom says, and in two years he gains 20 pounds of muscle. His parents don't know what to do. They don't know how to tell him what he needs to know, and he just looks so incredibly passionate talking about how he's going to explore the stars. Every night for the next 6 years of his life, he climbs out onto the roof outside of his bedroom window and looks into the night sky and takes deep, expectant breaths.

Childhood ends, and college begins. He studies hard - physics, astronomy major - and spends his free hours training with the ROTC program on campus. At first, when his friends talk about what they want to do with their lives, he smiles, and thinks about stars. But he hears the tone of worry and anxiety in their voices. He doesn't understand it, but for the first time in his life he understands fear.His determination to achieve his goal becomes more than desire. He begins pursuing his passion with iron determination, ruthlessly cutting away the parts of his life that would interfere with his dream, hurtling towards it like a sleek torpedo. He still dreams of stars at night.

His physics professor, a former nasa scientist, watches the boy carefully, who he knows by the boy's constantly attentive eyes and upraised hand. The boy is a constant fixture at the professor's office hours, and the professor can't stand to see the pain accrue behind his shining, fearless eyes. "look," the old man says. "they only accept 5% of applicants every two years, maybe less with the funding from this administration You have to market yourself, get internships, start writing letters, shaking hands, kissing babies. They won't give it to you just because you'll be good at it and because you deserve it - life's not that way."

The boy doesn't know what to do. He hasn't lived his life that way for 21 years, and it's too late to start. He tries, because he wants it so bad, he can't let go of it, but it wasn't enough. With the rejection letter clutched in his hand, he looks back at his whole life and with a motion akin to closing a door, he throws it in a wastebasket. He should have known better.

He becomes an engineer, a successful one, and marries a woman he loves. They have children, and move to a bigger home in a better neighborhood. The father never speaks about his dream ever again, and every day he tells his children, "The world is a cruel place. Get ready." He is fiercely protective of them. In the bedroom over the bed, though his wife protested, though they couldn't afford it, is a skylight, through which on a clear night when the city lights aren't so bright, he can see the stars that he never reached.


yeah, got a little carried away. The inspiration was this guy at work Joey, who was in training to be a firefighter, but failed the test. He told me he still feels it when he watches Rescue Me and shit like Ladder 49. I guess my point is, I really have lost some faith in the world, or at least in it's benevolence. M

Maybe I'm naive and idealist, and maybe I just didn't see how things were going to be when I was young. The way I saw it though, was this: I was born and the world offered me opportunity. "You can do anything", it said, "be anything. Just want it badly enough and it's yours, on a silver platter, in a steaming mug, however you want. Happiness is yours for the taking. Welcome to the world. "

but maybe I don't believe that infinite possibility rhetoric any more. I want to be a journalist, and I want to tell stories. But looking at all of the hoops I have to jump through, and what the job is really like, especially with modernization and the 'internet journalist', I feel like it's not possible to pursue a passion any more.

Which brings me to the question, what kind of person am I?

It seems like there are two kinds of people in the world distinguished by two kinds of happiness. In one form, happiness is a foggy, indiscriminate haze of pleasure, like when you're watching a good movie, or have just had a good meal, or heard a series of funny jokes with friends. It's not that this kind of happiness isn't worthwhile. It's just unearned. You think to yourself, "man, this is great. I could feel this for the rest of my life, but then...what would my life be?" Some people can deal with that - have a life that begins when the clock hits 5pm at their desk job.

On the other side, far superior, is passion. It's like happiness is a nice picture - satisfying, but two dimensional. Passion is an emotion in 3D - it's as real as anything around you. When you achieve it, it feels like your heart is expanding fit to burst, you can't sit still, you can't wait to see what the next minute brings, the intensity of it makes you clench your hands into fists. You're full of energy, happy just to be alive and doing what you do. These people, who live off passion, change the world, and are happier than anyone.

So which one am I? do I care about my passion or just my prosperity? I don't know.