In a little bit I’m going to go outside and give myself cancer…. but the sun isn’t high enough in the sky…. So I’m going to hopefully get a little bit off my chest.
You know the whole cliche of “They told me I could be anything, so I became….” Well in my generation there’s a lot of… what’s it called? Nihilism? Going around. Basically a lot of people think that there isn’t a point to life. Oh, you want to be a brain surgeon? Why? What’s the point?
Oh, well I want to help people.
And then comes this other group of people we like to call pessimists… they say “Oh, you can’t actually help people. You’re only one person. You can’t actually make a difference. And besides, you probably won’t make it to medical school and you probably won’t get a job and you’ll be paying off loans for the rest of your life so you won’t have any money to go change the world.” And the pessimist becomes the nihilist “What’s the point of changing the world anyway? The world is going to burn whether you try to change it or not. What’s the point?”
I’ve always thought of myself as a realist. You know, not a pessimist, one of those people who sees the world in it’s untainted state. FIRST of all, that’s the most pretentious thing I’ve ever heard(I’m sorry.) To have the audacity to think that I’m the only person in the world that doesn’t peer at the world through a lens is… well…. pretentious. It’s audacious. It’s ridiculous. it’s….. INSANE! SECOND of all…. what is real? Miracles happen all the time.
AND now that I’ve called myself an idiot….
What do I really want to do with my life? I can be anything, what do I want to be?
I think it’s finally hit me that I can be anything….
This is so corny, but I’ve been so caught up in realism that I’m denying myself the opportunity to change the world. My world.
So yeah now I’m working in a place with a bunch of other people who are trying to become nurses at the same time and I see a bunch of people who have set the bar low, and I don’t want to do that. I want to have an unrealistic goal. Shoot for the stars, if you’re lucky you’ll land on the moon(yes, I switched that around. Deal with it. Idiot.)
And what’s that about being practical? To paraphrase my all-time favorite movie(and perhaps a former British prime minister?)
I’m too young to realize that some things are impossible, so I do them anyways.
The guy who said that later accomplished the impossible. Some may call you a naysayer, I call you a nihilistic pessimist. humph. minitaur out.,
Chortle, chortle. You crack me up with that minotaur stuff. I say you’re absolutely right. Set goals high–and also recognize that doing the “little” or “mundane” stuff well has just as much power to change the world. There’s nothing more distressing to me than to hear someone say “I can’t do anything, I’m just a [insert something here].” Since when is anybody “just a”? You have the ability to do something extraordinary even by simply being faithful and joyful and Christ-like in the ordinary. So do it already!
You go, girl!