A common question I get these days is: What’s the point?
Hope can wither with but a glance at the headlines or a view to any horizon and meaningful work (hard to find), a higher purpose (elusive when social impotence is the norm), or a strong community (you mean what I get from my phone?) offer flimsy protection against a center that will not hold.
Why bother with personal progress when you follow global demise in every tweet and as everyone else advertises how great everything is for them?
But if the current era invites us to feel hopeless, the corollary is how quickly we lose trust in one’s own desires.
Don’t do this.
I once had a client who said to me, in reference to her status-driven parents, “I was trained to like what I do not like.”
I think of that statement often now as people ask, in essence, for permission to enjoy what they enjoy.
“Is there any utility in it?” a client said, referring to her love of reading long novels.
Yes, the utility is that it turns you on without exploiting anyone.
“Is it weird I love to roller skate? “ Another asked. “Everyone I work with has a Ph.D. and I feel like the odd person out.”
Great, be odd, a professor of moving through the world with a smile.
And yesterday a client whose career might take him into academic research about social policy is realizing he wants to work in the trenches instead. The people who do hard work—stocking shelves, cleaning hotels—are the most interesting folks he has ever met. “I love people,” he said, “not degrees. Is that O.K.?”
More than O.K.
Not all pleasure is justifiable, of course, and just because it makes you feel good does not mean you should commit a life to it. Roller-skating yes. Hurting others no.
But a fully alive human being is always positive, always hard-won, and always a beacon.
What makes us alive is up to us; the more idiosyncratic the taste buds of the soul, the better.
Identifying and moving toward what we care about is private growth that informs the world: We are more than cogs in an economic machine, more than players in some political game, can model the noble pursuit of life on its own terms.
Hah Hah, glad you like the purple prose, Sarah.
Thanks, David