Considering this post.
"Or, if you are just going to school and getting good grades so that you may get into a good college and for no other reason, why attend school at all or pay for a school as expensive at UHS? Why not take that money and go skiing and to baseball games now?"
"I just think it is interesting that we all seem to want to be happy but think that the only way to be happy is to make a lot of money, even if you are miserable while doing it, so that we can have a few weeks vacation every year to actually be happy."
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While reading this response to my previous post, I thought of the movie "The Great Debaters" in which a character says, "We do what we have to do so we can do what we want to do."
Considering this, I find it quite effective in representing my view of things. As my mother liked to remind me when I was little, "Well, sometimes we have to do things we don't like to." This conversation would normally take place within the context of me refusing to practice viola or eat tuna fish or something completely useless since I never was especially good at viola or very fond of mayonnaise.
Striving for something (like the bigger, capitalized End) does not mean that one rushes through life, "just going to school and getting good grades" in order to advance to the next step. It doesn't mean that there's no pleasure or happiness derived from going to UHS. Obviously there is, otherwise I would be in a different schooling situation. Having a greater End merely adjusts the perspective with which one might approach the alienation we feel sometimes (often, according to a rough poll in our class) as students doing seemingly pointless work.
The End isn't necessarily money either. Everyone has their personal end and yes for some maybe it's wealth, but I think that most people are grounded enough to see the larger picture. While eventually a large portion of us won't have the "perfect job," I doubt that any early 19th century worker truly felt impassioned by their factory work. We all would like to do any number of seemingly frivolous, but nonetheless personally important things like watch "The City," but sometimes we can't. Sometimes food had to be put on the table and clothing on the back. The End is an ideal.
And while skiing and baseball games are great, they're a sort of temporary happiness. Sure if you buy season passes or tickets, then the happiness is prolonged somewhat, but most people cannot go through life without facing circumstances that force them into labor of some sort. Why not have at least some semblance of control over your career so you don't end up completely loathing your job? School, no matter how great and amazing or stressful and inane it may seem at times, is a sort of cushion so we don't all end up selling ShamWows (though I'm sure he really enjoys his job and went through some sort of unpleasant schooling to get it). If your life goal is to sell ShamWows, then that's great. I'm sure that the training for it isn't particularly interesting, but if once you snap on the headset and polo then that's your End, congratulations.
For the rest of us, maybe it's not so simple. It's like this:
Child: Mommy, mommy! I want to become a rockstar.
Mother: Wow, Johnny, that's so exciting! What instrument?
Child: All of them!
And just in case Johnny can't manage to become a one-man mega band, Johnny also goes to school and decides he likes science class because he gets to blow things up.
The ShamWow Commercial
January 15, 2009
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I personally love to ski. I have seriously contemplated moving to Vail and becoming a ski instructor by day and a bartender by night so that I can wake up on those powder mornings and ski until my heart's content. I don't think it is fair to call that a temporary happiness because for some people it isn't. Some people choose to not participate in a job that offers a whole lot of security so that they may be happier more often, even if poorer. I guess what it boils down to is if you rather have certain security or certain happiness, not that the two can't be related.
ReplyDeleteAlso, why can't we do the things we love? If someone loves to watch "frivolous" TV shows, why shouldn't they do it all the time? What is stopping them? Maybe our parents tell us that we can't always do what we want because they are our parents and always want us to be protected, but how much are we willing to give up for protection?
I did not mean to portray UHS students as money-obsessed because I know the opposite to be true, but we are obsessed with success, as a whole, and success, today, apparently means having enough security so as to not end up selling ShamWows or whatever one thinks is equivalent for them. At what point did security surpass passion? Who are we trying to please? Maybe I am naive, young, wide-eyed, idealistic, and all that, but, for some reason, I cannot come to terms with the fact that my only possible way to put food on the table and clothes on my back might be to sit at a desk for the rest of my life, completing work that has no significance in my life or the lives of others, and while this somewhat reckless attitude may cause my mother some sleepless nights in the future, I figure that at some point I have to stop worrying about her expectations and hopes and concentrate on my own.
I'll add what I said over at sunset... Perhaps a couple of thoughts to an excellent post and conversation--two additional possibilities; one, power--enhancing one's power to act; second, as Artaud said: "Habit is the ballast that chains a dog to its vomit..."
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