On the gold rhino that looks over me while I work every day, I post an uninspirational message each week. In writing an email to Keith today, I posted one message at the bottom of the mail. He thought I was serious and asked me to explain myself. As it turns out, this uninspirational message actually had a seed of complexity within it... and here is what happened when I responded.
"You aren't being paid to believe in the power of your dreams."
alright, the statement is a joke, really, that's just a quote i found on an uninspirational website. however. i find it ironic that i joke about it because in all honesty, it's pretty true. in this world, we are no longer paid to believe in our own dreams or aspirations. instead, when we're born, we're given options, structures, ideals that we are told we can find dreams within. does that make sense? this is very specific to me-- i would like to write, all day long, sing sometimes, take photographs, play with children, run in the freaking meadows of the beautiful country i live in and indulge in sexual pleasures. that's my dream life. but in order to do just ONE of those things (and fit the other things in on OCCASION), i have to work 40 hours a week in marketing (not that i don't like this job, but it's very much against my grain), and weekends at starbucks, just to pay for the education that i will eventually need if i want to do the other stuff more frequently or if i want to get paid to write. i'm not getting paid to believe in the power of my dreams. i'm getting paid to fill a cookie cutter mold that someone else decided was necessary for this company. lucky for me, i still believe in the power of my dreams, and i'm still going to plug away after them regardless of what i'm getting paid for. i made the conscious decision to subscribe to this corporate lifestyle because i don't have to think about my dreams whilst i work here.
some people dream about being a part of corporate america. but i ask the endless question, what if they never knew corporate america existed? what would our dreams look like if we sat inside of a box? which dreams are inherent to us as individuals and which dreams are inherent to us as societal creations?
