what trap of hopeless emptiness? again, let me quote from revolutionary road.
april: don't you see? that's the whole idea! you'll be able to do what you should have been aloud to do seven years ago, you'll have the time. for the first time in your life, you'll have the time to find out what it is you actually want to do. and when you figure it out, you'll have the time and the freedom, to start doing. frank: this doesn't seem very realistic. april: no, frank. this is what's unrealistic. it's unrealistic for a man with a fine mind to go on working year after year at a job he can't stand. coming home to a place he can't stand, to a wife who's equally unable to stand the same things. and you know what the worst part of it is? our whole existence here is based on this great premise that we're special. they we're superior to the whole thing. but we're not. we're just like everyone else! we bought into the same, ridiculous delusion. that we have to resign from life and settle down the moment we have children. and we've been punishing each other for it.
it is the trap the conventional wisdom tell everyone of us. the delusion that we have to resign from life and settle down the moment we have children, go on year after year doing a job that we can't stand, coming home to a place that we can't stand, an existence of emptiness, of hopelessness.
sometimes, all that we need is to take some time out, to really understand what is it that we want to do, what is it that truly gives us gratification and joy.
too often, we're guilty of forgetting the aspirations that were idiosyncratic of every single one of us in our innocence and exuberance of youth, sacrificing them for the mundane and the average and the typical. travelling along the highway of life, afraid to veer off the trodden path, to attempt the path less travelled, content in the safety of numbers, to be just another face in the masses. we think that this is the way of the responsible, providing for our families but never considering just how is it that we want to live our lives, never giving a meaning to our lives.
paulo coelho writes: work is a blessing when it helps us to think about what we're doing; but it becomes a curse when its sole use to is to stop us thinking about the meaning of life.
he writes about a man, a good man, a responsible man, praised by all, popular, loved by both friends and family. he worked hard, gave his best both at work and at home, determined to be a good employee, colleague, husband, father. but he never paused to ask if what he was doing had any meaning. near the end of his life, the man was asked about what he had done with his life, if he had lived his life according to his dreams. his answer in the words of a poet? he passed through life/ he did not live it.
just what is the meaning of life if all that there is is to work hard for money? some might argue for the future, for the family, for the fulfillment.
really?
or is it the fear of doing something others deem unrealistic?
i'd like to end with these lines by robert frost,
two roads diverges in a wood and i - i took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.