Following Dreams

Following Dreams

   We had dinner with some friends last night, a few of them already retired, several about to retire and some still working at their own business or ready to move on.  But for the most part, everyone there was doing what they wanted...one couple is swamped working to get their love for bluegrass into their mix of work and getting their sons off to college (bluegrass is winning), another sharing a deep love for food and translating much of that into cooking for the homeless.  But all of us were older, having had time to share work stories and now comfortable enough to break off and chase what we felt we really wanted, be it helping others or helping the planet or helping make a dent in the couch.

   A local monthly, Catalyst, Resources for Creative Living, came out with a story that is becoming more and more common in today's world, that of people doing what they feel they need to do only 30 years sooner.  As one author, Pax Rasmussen, in the magazine put it, "I'll be putting in stable, well-paid employment for a low-paid apprenticeship with no real clear plans on what we'll be doing after that apprenticeship ends...whatever we do, it be improvisational, low-income, small-footprint, and probably pretty far outside what most people in our culture do: chase a paycheck, buy stuff, repeat."

   This was even echoed in a new book by LinkedIn co-founder, Reid Hoffman.  Titled The Alliance, the book emphasizes companies catching this jumping jobs fever, welcoming new employees and yes, tracking them.  But as the review stated in Bloomberg Businessweek, "Hoffman's ideas have grown out of an environment where young workers with elite backgrounds and big personal dreams are feverishly recruited under the guise of changing the world.  Businesses compete on perks, and managers hire well-educated people with highly transferrable skills for whom life is a breezy jaunt through decisions about which job offers great money, a not-objectionable mission, and appealing co-workers. But Hoffman leaves out an important consequence: Once employees make this choice, they give up their most creative, healthy  years to endlessly sit in front of a monitor. Most of their work will have little to do with personal development."

   This premise by businesses seems to be meeting resistance with numbers plummeting at sites such as Facebook and Twitter (an upcoming post will attempt to relay this story).  As author Rasmussen continues:  ...we have entered a period where growth is no longer "good."   We have far exceeded the carrying capacity of the land, and each increase in GDP just shortens the time until we pay a reckoning for the deficit we've been running on that carrying capacity.  The model of "success" in our culture is now empty, meaningless and worse, harmful.  We're done building!  No wonder some of us feel chasing the American Dream has no future.  No wonder some of us are craving something different.  I am not the first person, and by no means the last, to feel this way.  I'm not offering answers.  I'm not saying I know what is needed next...and my ability to make these kinds of observations and judgements about our culture is a condition of my place in that culture:  As a middle-class white male, I have the luxury of feeling like an outsider and making life decisions that involve stepping outside the mainstream path.  Recognizing privilege is important, no matter who you are.

   In reading Jacques Lusseyran's book, Against the Pollution of the I, he (blinded at eight years old but going on to form his own French Resistance group, captured and placed in Buchenwald, he was one of 24 survivors out of 2000 in his group) talks openly about his blindness:  Something has astonished me for a long time.  It is that blind people never speak about the things they see.  At least I never hear them talk about them to those who see with their physical eyes.  Rather often, however, when blind people are together, suddenly they tell each other what they perceive.  Then why do they ordinarily keep quiet about this?  I thin that basically the reason is rather simple.  They keep quiet because of society.  To live in society one must at any cost resemble everyone else.  Society demands it.  In order to adapt to the world of the seeing, blind people are obliged to declare themselves unable to see--and, believe me, I know what I'm talking about, for that has happened to me even when I knew very well that it didn't correspond to reality and was not true.

   Lusseyran says that the main thing we're missing is being attentive.  The "I" in his book is what is inside us, the light.  As one reviewer said, "he declares that the I's central vitality is under attack--and being polluted by--everything that steals our attention away from it and does not revere it.  His love for humanity compels him to declare the I in real need of protection...he vividly describes many senses beyond our usual five--available to all of us if only we pay attention."

   In a way, perhaps those now breaking away to find their passion, whatever their age (More magazine features just such a story in their October issue), are giving the rest of us Lusseyran's message...just pay attention.  Scary as it might be to give up a good job, a comfortable life, an established pattern, listening to your heart might prove the direction one needs to choose.  Maybe that decision will leave you homeless, maybe it will lead you back to square one...or maybe it will lead you into discovering another sense, another realm, another way of really, really listening.