Life is a fleeting dance set to a song played by God. Or something like that. The point is it doesn’t last forever. As many important people, such as internet writers, priests, teachers, and actors who play these people on movies have taught us, in order to fight the oppressive state of existence, we should all “chase our dreams.”
But in our current age of cynicism and economic uncertainty, many of you are probably rolling your eyes at that statement. Stop. You are an adult and eye rolling won’t be tolerated.
The time has come for dream-chasing to be en vogue again. We can be what we want to be. I promise. So here are the top five reasons you should get off your ass and chase those dreams:
1) Peanut butter is delicious.
One good thing about chasing dreams is that relative poverty makes peanut butter both a necessity and an luxury. This delicious paradox goes well with honey, jelly, syrup, mashed up bananas, and sugar substitute packets stolen from the coffee station at work.
Always go with crunchy. It is tastier and feels heartier. When you’re really hungry any food item that “feels” heartier tricks you into thinking you’re doing OK for a little longer. Mmm, peanut butter. I’m gonna have some Friday when I get paid. Or maybe just get some on my credit card again.
2) You get tougher.
Chasing dreams means hearing “no” over and over and over again. And again. While this repetitive rejection weighs on you like the judgment from the entire world that it in fact is, take heart. As they say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Remember though, the key is to make sure the constant feeling of inadequacy doesn’t actually kill you, because if it does, then that cliche is both sad and useless – just like you feel most of the time. So don’t die. Hold out, and you you’ll be tougher than your former college classmates who have security, money, and food. Those things make you weak.
3) Without health insurance you simply no longer get sick.
This is an underrated and amazing fact about chasing dreams. It is very important you learn this early on in dream chasing. When you don’t have insurance, or have insurance so bad that medical office receptionists with GEDs making $10 an hour laugh at you when you hand them your insurance card, you stop getting sick. I swear. It’s awesome. You’ll know in your heart that your fever, inability to sleep, and the green stuff coming out of your nose mean that you are very ill. But as you reflect on your bank account and life decisions, you will realize that actually, you are totally fine. Seriously. You just need some rest. It’ll pass. If you are married, your partner is also totally fine. Totally. Fine.
4) Survival IS THE DREAM in some places.
It may sound like a hollow cliche, but you really should remember that in many parts of the world, simply having food on a regular basis is the only dream some folks have time to think about. That means almost nothing to you when everything you believe in was just shat on by an internet commentator with an iPad and a regretful, hateful soul. But in times of reflection, remember that as long as you can eat, you have time to dream. And if you can’t eat, then you have even MORE time to dream because you’re not wasting it on food.
5) It is not as bad as other jobs.
While there are many many, many (like seriously a whole lot) extremely hard obstacles to overcome while chasing your dreams (there are about a million and they are soul-crushing), they pale in comparison to permanently chasing the alternatives.
Manual labor is noble, but in the end all you get is muscle tone and a pension you can’t live off of. On the other hand, the lonely existence of the corporate experience is a maddeningly horrifying exercise in repeating metaphysical crises. It erodes daily anything inside a person worth being or having. It does this to the point that there is no staring into the abyss, as the abyss is all encompassing. The abyss is you and you are the abyss- a complete and total void.
The corporate ladder leads to a hell that reveals you to be the pussy you have always been afraid that you are. Can you stomach another team building exercise, fumble through talks about how “nice” your Saturday was, or even attend, much less pretend to be mentally prescient for, another fucking meeting about nothing where the boss opens up the floor for questions at the end and somehow, amazingly, unFATHOMably Janice ALWAYS fucking has a goddamn question? Because she was “just wondering” and needs constant stimulus and the silence was making her itch! And then there is David. He just wants to let everyone know for the fifteen millionth fucking time some USELESS piece of information that BARELY serves to give him the validation he is not getting at home so that he makes it through one more day at the existential hell hole that is “work.” He WILL have a drink OR two when he gets home because he is an adult by God, and he is his own man.
And this is not their faults. They are, in a vacuum, amazing wonderful and passionate people. But they have been shaped, bent, chiseled, crushed, destroyed and reshaped by “the job” into entities I cannot bring myself to call robots, because I respect robots. But the point is, those jobs suck.
Of course, chasing dreams you’ll still have to swallow the shit sandwich that is the work force and have one or maybe two of these jobs, anyway. And all your co-workers will bristle and condescend at you like a bird in a nest making fun of a squirrel for not being able to fly when they find out about your “little hobby.” But, unlike them, at least you can convince yourself there is light at the end of the poop filled and suffocating tunnel. Plus saying “I’m an artist” as pretentiously as possible feels fucking great. Try it. Say it to that bitch in accounting you hate.
CHASE YOUR FUCKING DREAMS. There is no reason not to. Not even for one second. Because whatever anguish it causes you, you have to remember that all the alternatives are literal hell.
Chase those dreams baby!
Unless you have kids – ya’ll gotta do your duty and provide for them or whatever. But you’ll have joy and laughter in your lives.