A Dose of Realism

Lying on the couch with my husband of five months, two days before the turn of a New Year, I said in a daring but you know I am too chicken voice, “Let’s quit our jobs, cash out our savings, and go travel the world for one year”. My husband looked at me as if this was the most genius idea I had ever presented.

I rolled my eyes, laughed, and proceeded to explain why this was not realistic, why we could not partake in a twelve month journey of travel, exploration, education, and epiphany. Deep down inside I wish I were different. I wish I were a risk taker.

I grew up in suburbia New York where all families ate pizza on Fridays, attended Catholic mass on Sundays, and worked long hours the rest of the week. Each family yearned to establish the American Dream – defined as a consistent paycheck, decent sized home, college bound children, with yearly family trips that in most cases, were in driving distances. The overall theme of our parents American Dream was to institute a family of stability, success, and future advancement – none of which could occur by risky and uncalculated behavior.

And stability in any form was an early on goal of mine.

In pursuit of my growing up in the 80’s American Dream I have since resisted change, eliminated risk, followed all laws, and focused on generating a more than decent paycheck. But somehow, my own pursuit seems to fall short of internal desires that are regularly quieted by the realism that my childhood so strongly reinforced. Dream big, dream often, but dream within realistic boundaries.

Cautiousness keeps me on the couch but my journey of self will eventually get me out that door.

A Young Professional In Seacrh of A Future

Dear Barbara (Walters),

I don’t know if it can be true, but it appears that I may be your third friend request on Myspace. I can’t help but hope that if this is the case perhaps my message will get to you sooner than when you shortly have 250 friends and I am simply another wanna be hoping to reach you.

I assume many will want to leave you messages of admiration, comments of support, praise for your journalism talent, provide feedback, perhaps even ideas for your TV and radio shows. I write you in hopes of defining a dream and linking with a resource who can guide that dream. I am looking for a mentor.

I write to you as en educated, college graduate with a Masters degree. A young professional who works at a top Consulting firm in the US. A volunteer of charities and a part time gymnastics coach. I write to you unsatisfied and confused as to how I attained a job and began my career knowing without a doubt, I arrived by wrong turns.

I want to be a television host, maybe even a radio personality. My degrees never enhanced nor assisted in leading me to a career that was a best fit – a career that made sense. I love talking, interacting, researching, learning, and sharing. I am not a sit-behind-the-desk, paper pushing, uniform wearing type of girl. I am loud, bold, outgoing, dynamic, sensitive, relatable, witty, and a sometimes confident woman.

Barbara, in convincing myself to go after my best fit I have limited faith that I too can be a story of unlikely success without a little miracle from someone like yourself. If you for any reason want to help and mentor me towards this dream, message me back on MySpace – this grand communicative technology that allows the ordinary to reach the extraordinary with a few thoughtful sentences and the push of a button.

Sincerely,

Danielle

Passionless

I think the modern work world is overrated with high paying salaries to people who really don’t do much. But the economy and interest rates, and the increasing cost of living and rising tuition, expensive gas and environment friendly hybrid vehicles dictates what a job is valued at in order to keep money pumping into and out of the cities, states, countries, continents, and world. And somehow us human beings get lost in our materialistic need to keep up with our tainted environment, restricting our true desires from our must haves all because we need to survive - and surviving means renting, owning, eating, wearing, and worst of all- working! When I was a child and even into my teenage years, I spent many days dreaming and preparing for what I was to become as an adult. The world seemed to offer so many possibilities with so few restrictions. In the “old days” children were taught – be a good person (don’t get expelled, do drugs, or get arrested), get good grades, participate in sports or other extracurricular activities and well, all the rest will fall into place. For most of us, what we became or the job we might have, never had to do with how much we would make. Several years ago, where I was going and how I would impact the world was driven by the mere desire inside of me to do “something” that was influential. My passion so pure and virgin like, was not driven by a particular topic, cause, or dollar figure – it was simply the “compelling emotion” of wanting to become part of something bigger and greater than I had known at fifteen years old. So how did I get here? Sitting behind a desk in a nice windowed office, at a top consulting firm, making a decent salary (I take that back. I am underpaid. Why? Because everyone else is still making more doing less) somehow feeling less passionate and more confused about who I am and who I should become than when I was just a child.

Perhaps as we get older our passions become diluted by the driving forces of our environment that dictates what we should value, what we should become, what defines success. The “real” world my friends, is anything but real. We deceive children into believing that they can become anything they want – but then when they have received their education they also acquire high interest rates accompanied by never ending loans, we give them six months to find a job before they must pay up. The pressures from our external environment (rent, groceries, student loans) cause us to suppress our deep rooted passions in order to survive in this demanding, competitive society they we are forever indebted too.

An internal passion, a desire to have impact is like MasterCard, priceless. Never lose touch of your initial dreams, desires, and passions. Tap into your soul regularly in order to remain true to yourself and the path in which you anticipate sketching out over the course of your life. Sometimes we lose ourselves in all the things that everyone else values, we somehow convince ourselves that we value those same things and as a result our passions fade, and our dreams become blurred. Hold true to yourself – and when lost, continue to rediscover who you are as a person – you are bound to find yourself back at where you should have started.