Your reason to live is to pursue happiness and self actualization. My reason to live is to increase quarterly profits and achieve greater market capitalization for a large company. We are not the same.
It's much easier to pursue happiness, feel fulfilled, and get self actualization when you aren't poor, alcoholic, and on the bags with an entire friendgroup in the same situation while you browse Lemmy.
Friendly reminder (for everyone) from someone in the field that the vast majority of people who study law do not end up making millions of dollars a year at top firms. If you're just going into law to make money, there are much less expensive ways to do so.
Yeap, and the ones who do make millions usually have to work 24/7 in an extremely high stress environment. Burnout at those firms are pretty extreme, most just do it for a couple years to pay off loans and to pad their CVs.
I do have a buddy who is making a killing working a pretty low stress position for a top firm, but he took a really odd career course. Hes got a PhD in organic chem and then got his JD from Berkeley.
TBF compare that to being a rockstar these days is basically becoming an indentured servant to Ticketmaster or beholden to the pity and grace of an independent record label.
This reminds me of a story about a fisherman and some twat businessman out on some tropical island. Fisherman dude just fishes a bit and rests on the beach, never making much money and the businessman tells him he could make a lot more money toiling in some other job for decades and the fisherman asks him what the point is and he says "well eventually youll have enough saved up to be able to retire to a tropical island..." and just lists off stuff the fisherman is already doing.
That story is so old that the fisherman can no longer survive because his fish is undervalued, the water overfished, and polluted, the beach illegal to sleep on, and his property unaffordable.
I have been there. I studied hard, got into best colleges, got decent grades, but when I realized after my Master’s, when I got no job after months of trying, I have been depressed so long that I am still not okay. Even now, I feel like all that education is as pointless. If you can, chase after your dreams, but always be prepared for failure too. But failure should never be the reason to not chase your dreams. Take it from a failure like me.
As an addendum, don’t forget to have fun. Dreams are not end all be all of life. Fun is extremely important. And that fun is in the chase.
Same. I worked my butt off to make a five digit income only to realize that I was profoundly unhappy and none of the shit I could afford to buy would ever fix it.
Yep, I wasted the first 30 years of my life doing what I was "supposed to do" on a career trajectory. I have basically nothing to show for it, except a lot of bad memories and emptiness. As I approach 40, I'm finally learning how to have fun, push my boundaries, make friends, embrace my creative side, take risks, all of which I should have done long ago.
Just as a positive note... the American Dream isn't about getting a house and being rich... it's about the possibility of someone who is poor to be able(even allowed) to rise up to some measure of success in a way that just was not possible or very unlikely in other countries.
Remember kids, if you aren't born to wealth, NEVER follow your dreams, unless they are marketable, soul crushing dreams that can be exploited to fund the dreams of your economic betters and their largely useless children.
Know your place, ants. You only exist so kids like Wyatt Koch can grow up to do this:
I think that's buying into the mindset that capitalists want to project onto the lower class. Don't dream, don't strive for equality or equity, those are reserved for us.
If we don't follow our dreams it erases the very possibility of a brighter future. I think even sarcastically appealing to this kind of thought is dangerously reactionary.
I'm the son of a poor immigrant, dropped out of highschool at 16 to work full time. I started going back to school and working nights, continuing to do so until my residency.
It took longer and I had to work much harder, but after a certain point in a lot of fields, its fairly easy to out compete the rich kids. Most haven't had to work for anything they've ever had, and so they don't really have a true calling or any kind of work ethic.
The kid dreamed of his mom being hotter and it was not considered a bad dream. Now he studies law to find in which state the rest of the story can happen legally.
I have a theory that between panel 1 and 2 the mom somehow slipped into a coma and is dreaming her best life. But I enjoy thinking of Twilight Zones lol. 🥴
This common misunderstanding of the purpose of life is addressed by Alan Watts in this short animation illustrated by Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame.