A Dead Poets Society reflection and a rambling on the gap between what I have and what I desire
Recently I rewatched the Dead Poets Society, and was struck by the emphatic speech Robin Williams gives to the group of uniformed boys huddled around a desk.
“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”
So much of our lives are funneled away into the pursuit of 9-5’s and conforming to rules of society, rules that become so concretely ingrained that we begin to lose our sense of reason just to uphold them. (Rules that vary by culture, like when I reached my mid twenties and every conversation in my South Asian household led to the topic of marriage – as if that’s the only way you can be whole and happy in the 21st century, because that’s the formula all the generations before me have followed up until now.)
And in this pursuit of a 9-5, you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. For instance, I have been on the job hunt full time since early fall with nothing but two unsuccessful interviews to show for it. In the current day and age, where applying to entry level jobs consists of showcasing years of experience and talents you haven’t had the chance to yet develop, job searching is a terribly soul-crushing experience. The constant ghosting and rejections chip at your soul and begin to define your self worth. But as I center my life and my self-esteem around the prospect of landing a job, I’ve begun to wonder – is my time only valuable if I’m getting paid?
There are plenty of other things I like to do that bring me fulfillment, even if it doesn’t bring me a single dime. For instance, I spend my time making art. I write out my feelings in a journal full of prose and poetry. I make small and unordinary paintings, just to feel the stroke of the brush on canvas. I press down on the strings of a guitar or the keys of an old piano just to hear a new melody, even if it’s been years since I’ve successfully managed to read a music note. I sit out near an open window to feel the soft breeze and watch rain fall onto concrete. These are the things that bring joy. These are things that feel worth living for, the rewards gleaned from a hard day’s work.
And yet, the capitalistic part of my mind tells me that these things are a waste – what value is there in moments that do not drive in a steady income? I have to remind myself I am not a cog in a machine, and that I am not defined by a number of zeros in my bank account or the number of rejections piling up in my inbox. I am a person with dreams, passions, failures, talent, and wit.
I have a hard time understanding the hate toward people who pursue art and humanities, nor the dissuasion towards such career prospects. It’s true, not everybody will become a rich and/ or famous artist, author, actor, or singer. But is the point of art to make money? When I engage in art, it’s for the sake of my own satisfaction, because it helps me make sense of the world around me and see beauty in the things that feel gray and dull otherwise.
Recently, I watched a video of a man speaking to his past self. The thumbnail says, “I betrayed my true self in a way that hurt me so bad I could not forgive myself for 22 years.” It was about a man who quit his job as a neurosurgeon to pursue the things he truly enjoyed in life, and re-learn how to love himself. It is such a common occurrence– especially for those who are financially unstable or have the external pressures from family and society– to disregard their creative visions and pursue routes in medicine, engineering, computer science, law, etc. The kind of career routes deemed acceptable and admirable. But after compromising many years of my own life (choosing to study psychology to potentially open the door to a scientific field, when all I really wanted to study was English and communications) I felt that I have been betraying my true self too. Since I was a child, all I have ever wanted was to write, and everything else in my life has felt like background noise. Building blocks to nothing to bide my time, although for what outcome, I don’t know.
Structure and societal acceptance is integral to the human experience, but it feels that we get so lost in these things that we lose our way. We put ourselves in thankless positions for the benefit of invisible superiors and wonder where the sense of community has gone. Or we reach out to numerous recruiters, create endless new accounts for each company, write and rewrite cover letters gushing about how much we love them, and wonder why the execution of tasks that should be so simple has become so complicated and convoluted. I can’t help but feel that I am wandering through a maze like some kind of ghost, invisible to the world as I try to make myself seen in professional spaces. And yet, a part of me wonders if I am not succeeding because my heart is not really in it – because these jobs that I sit down and pray for aren’t what I actually want to pursue.
In short, yes, medicine, engineering, law are all noble and amazing pursuits. But how can we balance and uplift the necessity of these positions without demonizing the quest for creativity? How do we seek our passions against the current of voices that wants us to settle in complacency? This is a dilemma I struggle to tackle head on; I am privileged enough to live with my family and search for a job while having a roof over my head at no extra cost to me, yet not privileged enough that I can continue to whittle away the time endlessly without some kind of monetary compensation. And I just can’t help but wonder, how do we re-center the aspects of life that make being human an authentic experience, an experience worth staying alive for – focusing back on poetry, on romance, on beauty, and on love?
