Waxing Philosophical

I was innocently browsing the web and stumbled across a blog, the writer of which was “waxing philosophical” and forgetting to come back down to the rest of us on earth.

I was mildly amused by it. Then, I saw it on the side bar of the website. A large white poster, with black words all over it, some of them bigger and some of them smaller, which I think is supposed to help you sort out what the main idea is. This poster was clearly a child of that “I Hope You Dance” song, because it listed all sorts of creeds that you ought to live by and reminded you that you were going to die soon.

Those are great and inspirational and all that and I felt my right brain taking off on the wings of the emotion that this homily offered, but thankfully the practical side of me intervened almost at once.

Let’s examine these words of wisdom more critically, beginning with the first statement “Do what you love.” This is a fine sentiment, and one that I partially believe in. But let’s be reasonable. If you tell the wrong high school student to do what they love, they will stay at home and eat Hot Cheetos in bed until 2 p.m. In Office Space, when the main character is asked what he would do if he had a million dollars, he responds, “Nothing. I would do absolutely nothing.” So we run in to an issue with this inspirational statement right away. We obviously can't have the whole world sitting around doing nothing.

But I don’t want to be nit picky, so let’s move on to the next suggestion: “If you don’t love your job, quit.”

I have particular experience with this one. I had a job that sucked the soul out of my life and could potentially have destroyed the good things in my life if I had let it. So I decided to do some research on my options and I went back to school and got a part time job (that I also didn’t love) until I got through school and could do what I loved. But I got lucky and only had to do this once. Some people do this so many times that they can hardly get a paycheck in their account before they are on to the next career. This means they are very poor, which is fine, but being poor interferes with another inspirational command on this same poster, which is: “Travel often.” I don’t think they mean go on free walks, so you need some kind of money, and if you quit your job because you don’t love it, then you obviously can’t travel. And then you are back at square one, and your life is unfulfilling because you can’t complete this checklist that you were given. And your right brain plummets back to earth.

By the time I was done reading the poster, I was just plain frustrated.

 I was frustrated because I have known many people who seem to live in the realm of the hypothetical, to walk on rainbows and float through clouds, and their advice is as ethereal as their moods. It all sounds great until you weed through it to find the actual meaning and then you discover that you have been given nothing of substance. That is the problem with this – and all similar – posters.  That is the problem with living your life in the realm of the hypothetical, of losing hold of the practical.

               

Spouting philosophical proverbs does not make you wise, following them certainly doesn’t either, and being able to inspire yourself with vague words about vague attitudes you should hold and impractical actions you should take is not only not difficult, it is unimpressive. What is impressive are the people who inspire you, not with their vain words and their platitudes, but with their life. When you look at a person and are inspired by their actions, their love, their approach to living – that is true inspiration, and your aim-for-moon-dance-like-no-one-is-watching cliches can be damned.

Put THAT on a poster.