Protecting your dreams 16

[rotw]

Time flies and things change in your life. People get married, some have children, with time comes obligations, responsibilities increase. People go through personal challenges, health challenges, money challenges whatever,...
Sometimes all it takes is just a bad career move. Another time its your boss who tells you that the company need to let some people go ; came out you are one of those. Or again its just an A$$hole that pissed you off to the point where you could not take more.

Then there is a point in your life you start to think its maybe the moment to start making a compromise, to be "wise". And so you do and so you try till you painfully realize that you are living the life of someone else instead of living your dream. It was your dream and it did belong to you but you lost it for the sake of social stability and thousand of other reasons.
Whether you are well paid or not, whether you live to the highest standard was not the real point. You can only be happy doing what you love - end of story. There is no other way: you want your dream back.

How far would you go to protect your dreams ? Its a very personal question, I can imagine.
Would you like to share your stories ? I am sure there will be some useful lessons learned and an education for me.

My dream was to become a mechanical engineer, since 20 year. I feed I did not protect my dream enough and I lost it as I am doing a job that is not for me. The lesson I learned is that the pain you may experience daily to protect your dream, such us giving up your pride and ego, all the suffering from the hard work and late hours is NOTHING compared to the pain of loosing your dream. I learned that its important to thank life for all the gifts we have as its the best way to keep them. I feel I did not do it enough.

Sorry its not a very technical topic... please forgive the bad quality of my English.

 

[nickelkid]

Gosh, if you have a dream and the passion, go for it. If it does not work out, and you did your best, so be it. If it goes well, that is great.

I see nothing wrong with following the herd, but that is not for everyone, nor should it be.

The world will not end if you fail, you will only end up tougher and wiser. One needs to decide if they the fortitude for failure.

 

[IRstuff]

As an example, Albert Einstein was most productive in his earlier years, 1905, to be specific. He spent the majority of the tail end of his life breaking his pick on the Grand Unified Theory, not because he didn't work hard, but because he simply didn't have the tools or knowledge to make an advancement. Had he realized that he couldn't get there, he might have had other, equally important, discoveries.

TTFN
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
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[urgross]

Seems it would be easier just to lower your expectations-I know my wife did.

There was a song some years ago, I cannot remember the title. The lyrics were about a group of migrant workers trucked in every day, for generations, to hack down thorns growing around a military base. One day a new guy comes on and sees that they've been hacking down thorns for generations, and there never is an end. He asks why they don't just pull them up by the roots. The older, wiser people there told him to shut up because its been feeding their families for generations.

 

[KENAT]

Thanks for the compliment JNieman.

I assume you meant it as a compliment, just like I assumed my old head master (school principal) meant it as a compliment when he accused me of similar. The look on his face when I said thanks suggested to me he didn't actually mean it as such but I can't see your face so I'll assume.

When I said 'tolerate' that's really the low bar expectation and hopefully most folks would realize that and aim a little higher such as 'like some of the time' or other lofty goals. However, low bars are there for a reason and sometimes you need to go the minimum acceptable route.

If protecting dreams is what's really important then some folks use these:



Shout out to moltenmetal for the despair.com reference - I resisted the urge to put similar as I didn't want to upset anyone who really believes that 'Team work makes the Dream work' and are lucky enough to work somewhere that the flying carpet take off zone is de-conflicted from the unicorn parking.

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[JNieman]

I am glad you didn't take it too harshly. I earnestly meant no disrespect. "Cynical" is, I believe, a great trait in an engineer

And as IRStuff suggests, I may have missed the whole point and came to an incorrect conclusion.

In general, however, I disagree with dispassionately assessing your life. I believe that is exactly where passion belongs - identifying your self-determined role in life. Not career - just life in general. Family man, traveling explorer, midwest river fisherman, basket weaver, highest ranked PvP player on your WoW server, whatever. We're not meant to be robots all the time.

 

[KENAT]

Who said anything about no passion, however, a little bit of 'suck it up' will sometimes go a long way.

This obsession with everyone wanting to be 'happy' all the time is self indulgent, hedonistic rubbish as looking at Maslow's hierarchy moltenmetal linked points out. Although it's making the drug companies pretty wealthy.

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[JNieman]

If you're not working toward happiness in life, then what are you living for / working toward?

 

[1gibson]

Everything else that you want, that isn't an impossible to fully achieve, arbitrary and ideal concept. Good engineers are good engineers because they don't believe in ideal concepts, otherwise we'd be mathematicians or theoretical physicists.

 

[JNieman]

I think we surpassed cynicism and have lurched toward nihilism.

I never said one would achieve absolute happiness or nirvana or whatever. But I'd rather work toward happiness and risk 80% accomplishment, never reaching 100%, than to work toward mediocrity knowing I can achieve it.

 

[moltenmetal]

JNieman: happiness and satisfaction are related but different things.

[I don't think anyone is even suggesting that the mere act of working hard will get you your dreams

That is PRECISELY what some people pitch to young people- that the mere combination of hard work and passion is sufficient for success. I believe we agree that they're wrong to do so.

What lesson are you really trying to preach in telling people NOT to believe hard work pays off? To simply not work hard? That's a great lesson for kids. Life's hard and sometimes unfair, so don't even bother trying. What a life! :

We actually agree: you qualified your remarks by talking about rational analysis, data-gathering, putting together a plan, being flexible etc., and that's most of my point- the rest being that you can't blame someone's failure on a lack of hard work, or be guaranteed that someone who HAS succeeded has indeed worked hard. I don't believe that anybody said that working hard was either unnecessary (i.e. that you can trust in luck alone), or that hard work was necessarily futile. But it's also quite clear that hard work on the wrong things IS futile. In fact it can be significantly worse than merely being futile. Case in point: learning a musical instrument. Everyone knows that hours and hours of practice are essential, but what few realize is that improper practice can actually result in a permanently stunted player- un-learning well practiced bad habits or technique can be as tough as kicking an addition.

 

[KENAT]

Not Nihilism at all, in fact obsession with 'happiness' - at least at a superficial level - could be seen as a distraction from the true path for many faith/belief systems.

I have a couple of personal philosophies that I try (but often fail) to follow that tie into my beliefs.

1. Do unto others as you would have done unto you
2. Suck it up Nancy (sorry if this is perceived as non PC or even out right offensive - but it's a child hood expression that sticks in my memory)

I'd rather work toward being a 'good man' and positively benefiting those around me than on my own individual superficial happiness.

I suspect some of you will see a conflict here with my 'occasionally' contrarian and/or blunt posts but I don't necessarily perceive pandering to others 'feelings' as actually benefiting them.

However, personal belief systems shouldn't generally be discussed in polite company and perhaps I'm getting way off topic and too personal so I'll stop there.

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[JNieman]

Maybe this is where the disconnect is. What you describe are "how" traits. How you live your life. In what manner you behave to be the person you want to be. But they do not define toward what end you are progressing. What goals you set out.

I believed the subject to be toward what end should you set your goals. More of a "what" than a "how". Achieving your dream job / status / goal / whatever. Dream jobs or dream life or whatever. At least that's the way I was interpreting the thread topic. I may be mistaken, of course.

 

[TheTick]

Link to favorite Denis Leary quote about happiness in small doses. Not posting text, a tad too blue. NSFW but shouldn't make you blush if you're a well-adjusted adult.

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/12113-happiness-comes-in-small-doses-folks-it-s-a-cigarette-butt

Enjoy your cookie. Now get back to work!

 

[KENAT]

As posted my end goal is to be a 'good man' (not there yet) and to have improved things for 'others'.

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[urgross]

This is beginning to sound like one of the philosophy courses I took describing felicific calculus.

Why work towards happiness when we have such a vast pharmacopeia? A gram is better than a damn (stolen from Orwell, who stole it from Zamyatin).

 

[jasonlaroche]

Nice Post.

 

[CheckerHater]

Is it possible to have a dream that is not including going to work?

"For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert"
Arthur C. Clarke Profiles of the future

 

[moltenmetal]

CheckerHater: those dreams are usually interrupted by the alarm clock which wakes me up to go to work...

 

[IRstuff]

CheckerHater: Sure, so long as the dream includes one or more of the following:
> being independently wealthy
> being kept by someone who is independently wealthy
> not needing to eat or needing a place to live
> already living at your workplace, either because you've gotten divorced because your spouse thinks you are too much of a dreamer, or you can work from home
> making money writing blogs:

https://www.siteblog.com/

TTFN
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
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[ScottyUK]

Dreams which involve work are known as nightmares in my part of the world.