On Creativity and the Artist

So I've made a realization... or at least a decision. Perhaps one based on the other.

Growing up we're really only told about a fraction of what life is really like. Before I continue I understand your apprehension to attribute to me any sort of legitimate knowledge of what life is really like; I think that a 21-year old college senior facing the abyss of adulthood has an interesting vantage point from which to base their views on. That said, I believe I know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, when we're growing up we're told that we're going to finish high school and go to college and then go to grad school and get a white collar job doing sort of kind of what our parents do or at least what our friend's parents do. It's like the the weirdest modified form of an agrarian/Old-world kind of view. And for a while I thought that's what I was going to do too. I thought I was going to go to college and do pretty well and then go to law school and become a lawyer for the vast majority of my life and then I'd retire and die. While this is still a possibility, I'm getting the feeling that this isn't necessarily the path that I should be on.

Again, they tell you as a kid that this is kind of what you're supposed to do--goading you into the maths and sciences or specializing in something like international politics (which seems like a really fancy way of saying you watch the news a lot). But they never really tell you that it's okay to not strive for a mid- to high-paying white collar job because I guess if they told everyone that then no one would. But what about the people that can't or know they just don't want to? You never get that encouragement to pursue passions or the arts. [Though don't get me started on the public school system not encouraging the students to pursue anything... because they don't.]

What college has taught me more than anything else (and here comes the point), is that I'm good at a lot of things. Before I get branded narcissistic, I want to qualify that by saying it taught me that I'm good at a lot of things I had never before imagined I would be good at. I've become something of an actor and consider myself pretty good at it. Someone told me yesterday for the first time in my life that my singing voice was beautiful. Beautiful? That made my life. I never philosophized before college or wondered about the nature of things. I didn't observe people or read Sigmund Freud for fun. I've come to realize that I am a creative person--that I look at things differently and have different capacities than many people.

But I'm sitting here just talking about my talents, I'm getting at the fact that maybe, just maybe, white collar work isn't for me. I'm not saying I'm going to be a vagrant. I'll work. But what I am saying is that I'm okay with only getting by as long as I have time to stretch my creative limbs.

If my parents are reading this, I'm sorry. I feel like I just came out of the proverbial closet and now they're sitting at the computer shaking their heads thinking they could have done something different and maybe I wouldn't have turned out this way. Then again maybe they would prefer I wear dresses as long as I'm still an accountant or a lawyer. I'm kidding (halfway). But why can't this be okay? Why isn't it okay to be an artist? Or a philosopher? Or a struggling anything?

It is okay. No one is saying it's not. But you look at people who work in grocery stores or are career baristas or waiters and you think, Wow that's sad... guess they never had a chance to go to college. Why does that have to be the mindset? Maybe they love their jobs. Or maybe they hate their jobs, they just love not having to take their work home with them or work 80-hour work weeks. Maybe they love interacting with people and don't care about living paycheck to paycheck. Again, no one is saying it's not okay for someone to live like this, but I want to see if maybe we can look at it not so much as them being deficient in some way that others are not, but instead that this is who they are and that's all they can be.

I love philosophy. Obviously. Nothing gets me going like a debate over human nature or political philosophy or even metaphysics. I think the most snide comment I get about being a philosophy major is, "What, are you going to be a philosopher?" My response is, "Yeah, why the heck not?"

I think this world needs creative people (and here comes the second point.) Yes, of course we need people to do politics and science and farming and accounting and all that stuff. But humans are the only species with the capacity for upper-level reasoning and temporal memory. We measure our lives through memories and the passage of time and we plan and we love and we create. We are the only species who seek to find meaning in our lives and constantly seek to find our true nature. Sure, I would love to make a ton of money grinding numbers or trying cases, but I'm not ashamed of being a human being who loves to think and be creative--even if that means not making a lot of money. This is just who I am. I know it seems like a cop-out to say that I want to spend my life enjoying being human because you can do that all the time. But what I do know for sure is that I don't regret anything. I don't care what people's perception of a good life is. No one should.

It's like I said--life is an abyss. You fill it with whatever you want. Some just tend to add more color than others. Me? I couldn't do without it.