Most of us know what we want to do deep inside: We know what the child in us dreamed about, we know what makes us tick, we daydream about the kind of activities that provides us intrinsic fulfillment and act as their own reward, those things that we would enjoy undertaking for their own sake, not for the sake of some external benefit.
Most of us have some idea about the kind of pursuits in which we would feel in total flow, where the sense of time is distorted, and where we feel what we are doing makes sense.
Maybe you’ve experienced it when you were a child in the playground, or as a teenager playing some musical instrument, reading a book, or playing some sports.
Maybe you’ve experienced in a social gathering, while walking down the streets of a new city, while solving a mathematical equation, or creating an artwork.
Some call it a dream, others a passion, a life calling, a purpose, a path towards self-actualization and authenticity.
Whichever name you put on it, there probably came a time in your life where you just ignored it and let it go, telling yourself:
“With the busyness and practicalities of daily life, who has time for chasing after dreams?”
So you’ve let yourself coast along in life, following whatever cultural norms and valued goals are deemed important by your culture and society, and blend in with the masses.
In the same way a child would feel safe in the arms of his mother, blending in with the masses helped you avoid taking responsibility for what you do with your own life and made you feel accepted by others, safe, and comfortable inside the collective womb.
After all, why would you go through all the trouble of following your aspirations and dreams? Why would you choose a more difficult path of actualizing your potentials, when you can just live a comfortable life?
Here are 4 reasons why.
Reason #1: There Is No Comfortable Life
If you are not following your dreams because it will be painful and you believe you will have an easier and more comfortable life by just conforming and coasting along, then sorry to break it to you, but that’s not going to work out, because there is no and there will never be such thing as a pure cozy & easy life.
Whatever path you take in life, pain and hardships are inevitable, they constitute an inherent part of life, that we can never avoid, however much we try, and however much we believe in the myth that our society & culture tell us: That once you buy that new car, that new gadget, that new house, once you marry that person, you get that job, you will finally feel fulfilled and happy for the rest of your days.
This is but another instance where your instinctual desire for seeking eternal pleasure and comfort and avoiding pain is simply being used against you by companies and media corporations to sell you stuff and make profit out of you.
But the hard truth we must all face is there is no 100% comfortable and happy life. Life is made of joy, of pain, of ups & downs, and everything in between, and that is always true regardless of the direction you take.
So if you take the route of conformity and follow whatever pre-made path in life was given to you from others, you will still face hardships, difficulties, and experience pain and suffering while working towards those goals imposed on you by your society.
If you take the route of authenticity, and create your own path in life that leads you towards your aspirations and valued goals, you will also still face hardships and experience pain and suffering along the way.
The difference is that, on the path of conformity, when a pain comes and hits you, it completely breaks you: you have given up on yourself and completely followed what your society preached to you, and still, suffering found its way to you. This will either make you plunge into depression, or have you repress this existential shock and lock it deep into your unconscious, making those emotions able to control & influence your everyday life without you even being aware of it. Both outcomes being destructive.
However, in the second case, on the path of authenticity, any pain and hardships that come your way will have meaning: They are in the service of working towards your dreams, on your path towards your aspirations and valued goals.
It’s but an obstacle that you have to overcome to keep on working on what’s important to you. They are but one more hurdle separating who you are and who you aspire to be.
Therefore, you will own them.
To sum up, given that pain & hardships are unavoidable, the best thing you can do in life is being who you really are, pursuing your crazy ideas, and following your dreams.
“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
Anne Rice
Reason #2: You Are Going To Die
Do this simple exercise: Imagine yourself on your deathbed, feeling your death coming at any second, and reflecting & contemplating what you have done in your life time.
Now, let’s say that you have spent your entire life ignoring yourself, ignoring what your soul whispers to you on those lonely nights, ignoring what you care about deep inside the most and running away from your dreams & aspirations.
You’ve spent your whole life just following what you are told, what your parents told you, what your friends told you, what your society told you, pursuing goals that your culture deems valuable: getting that degree, that job, marrying that person, buying that house, without ever stopping to actually ask yourself:
“Does this really matter to me? Are these goals aligned with who I am? What do I actually really care about in Life?”
Imagine you’ve spent an entire lifetime of conformity, coasting along, and plunging into distractions and pleasures whenever your remember you are not being who you want to be and wasting your life.
On your deathbed, you will no longer be able to distract yourself, and all you can do is to face the truth. So at the moment, when death is near, reflecting on how you spent your life, what would you feel?
What would you feel?
Wouldn’t it be extreme regret that you have wasted your life and your only chance at living authentically and deeply?
Wouldn’t the last thought that crosses your mind before disappearing into the void be “F*** what have I done with my Life?”
Do you want to leave this world thinking and feeling in that way?
Probably not.
Luckily, you are not there yet, you can still move and do things, build empires, and if you are not on a personally meaningful life path, you still have time to correct your trajectory.
You can still choose to work hard towards your valuable goals and aspirations, become everything you want to become, build yourself the life of your dreams, and then leave this world with a smile on your face.
Reason #3: You Can Fail At Anything
“You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.”
Jim Carrey
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A lot of us fear failure, we believe that taking the path of following our dreams and aspirations comes with a high risk of breaking apart and sinking.
We don’t even understand failure: We think it’s the end of us, while it’s just the beginning of a wiser, more experienced, and more resilient “us”.
But we let this fear controls our lives, control the decisions we make and our actions, making us choose an easier life path laid down by society for us, thinking that this will protect us from setbacks.
However, the truth is, we can fail at anything.
Even if you choose to live a passive life following what everyone else is doing, you can still fail at that.
You can still fail at being not who you want to be. So why not fail at being who you are?
Reason #4: Dreams Give Meaning To Your Life And To Everything You Do
“The meaning of life is to give life meaning”
Viktor E. Frankl
In other words, there is no absolute cosmic meaning to life that is valid for all humans beings: Everyone decides for themselves what the purpose of their existence is.
So given the idea that we create our own meaning, what are some potential candidates for giving a sense to our existence?
Religions, complex moral philosophies, or simply the strive towards mastery could all provide us with a stable framework for living one’s life.
Chasing after our dreams could also imbue our lives with meaning while honoring and living up to our authenticity and individuality.
In fact, dreams could give a compelling & satisfying answer to existential questions such as: “Why Am I alive?”, “What’s the purpose of my existence?”
And the answer would be:
“I’m here to fulfill my dreams, and then die in peace.”
So why bother with following your dreams?
Because life is already hard enough, there are already enough hardships, difficulties, failures, and dull things we have to deal with before death takes us all. The least we could do is to add a little passion, colors, love, and aliveness to our existence by pursuing our deepest, most ambitious, craziest ideas & dreams.
“Your heart knows the way.
Rumi
Run in that direction.”
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