Living for Dreams

I entered the workforce full time in the 1990s. I was initially in the private sector making really good money. What a difference a wife and kids makes in your paycheck need perspective. Scratch versus stability. The economy later pushed me into teaching behavior challenged kids at an alternative school. Scratch versus stability.

Teaching behavior challenged kids is an honorable profession. We will leave it at that. Suffice it to say it isn’t the kids that world that need help. It is the adults.

I digress. I recently sat with other potential hires for an organization owned by a man who at forty, bragged about his business being his dream. Rudely expressing his expectations, he told us that we would help strengthen his team f or very little money and even less respect. Forty for me isn’t that far off. I left, thinking, “Why have I wasted my working life living for other people’s dreams?”

In the car on the way home, I did some quick mental math. Exactly what do I need to live on per month? Thanks to a divorce I was no longer footing the bills for a monster mortgage, three car notes, and someone else’s silliness. The number was pretty low. With some modifications, I still had to work (don’t we all?), but I could begin pursuing my dream instead of growing old helping someone make theirs come true.

When making my new “Let me do me” budget, top on my list were housing and my son’s education. I also had to pay for transportation. Everything else, including my ego, became expendable. If I found working some job that intimates would think was below my education and stature embarrassing, I reminded myself what working for prestige cost me. I had all the prestige in my world when focusing on bringing someone else closer to their goal. All whores have prestige. It’s what keeps them whoring while someone else gets rich off of their work. Prestige is the currency someone pays you to convince you their dream is your own.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote what killed Jay Gatsby was he paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. Too many of us who entered the workforce in the thriving nineties, however, paid too high a price to fulfill others’ dreams. Others’ dreams for us. Others’ dreams for themselves. Incomplete dreams about getting a piece of all the money there was to be made then. We can make more money, but we will never regain that time. No, I agree with Carraway. Gatsby was alright in the end. It was what preyed on Gatsby. What preys on many of us? A desire to have a bit of our dream, a bit of some money, a bit of this and a bit of that. Why, with all these bits that don’t add up, are we are wholly unsatisfied?

Look at your life long and hard. Whose dream are you living?