For years, my dream was to one day be a standup comedian.
It wasn't a dream that I was very vocal about, due to my fear of the response that I might get, but it was my passion nonetheless. Now, after roughly two years of trying to hone my craft and try to become a better comedian, I have decided that this dream is no longer worth chasing.
Before you jump to the seemingly obvious conclusion, no this is not me giving up on my passion because I don't think I can have a financially stable life out of it. My decision is not based on any societal norms or what is expected of me, but since I left for college for the first time a year and a half ago, I have learned to see the world, and my life, very differently.
Just to be clear, this was not a decision that I made in haste; I spent many months, going back to the previous school year, thinking about the direction I wanted my life to take, and as I looked back on why I had this dream in the first place, I realized that perhaps the entire reason for such a desire was misguided.
This is not to say that the passion I had was never real. At the time, it felt as real as anything else in my life, but with the benefit of hindsight, I now realize that the reasoning behind it was not what I thought it was. It wasn't because I really wanted to be a comedian, but because I really couldn't see myself, or didn't want to see myself, doing some normal job that I thought was below my potential.
However, as I progress with my history education degree, I can, for the first time in my life, envision myself doing a job that I care about, and that actually matters to me, without it being something regarding wealth or fame or anything of that sort.
That isn't the only reason that I was overzealous in my attempts to follow my "dream". I fell into the same trap that a lot of young, idealistic people fall into. We tend to romanticize the life we envision for ourselves; we overestimate how great that life is going to be, and play the potential great moments over and over in our heads, while leaving out the grind, the hard work, the bad days, and any other less than satisfying moments.
This is completely understandable; it's human nature to not want to feel bad things, but it certainly doesn't do you any favors in a situation such as this. What it does is create this perfect scenario in your head that is simply impossible to achieve in real life, and I have finally gotten to the point in my life where I'm mature enough to realize that the future I constructed was just that: a construct.
However, quite possibly the most relevant and important reason I've decided that this passion isn't worth it is because it may have never even been about what would have made me happy; it was about what I wanted to get out of my life. It's not lost on me how vague and cryptic that was, so let me explain further.
There's a saying that you die twice: the first time when your physical form ceases to function, and again when nobody is left to remember who you were. It's nearly impossible to imagine a world in which we, as individuals, don't exist.
Honestly, it's a pretty frightening thought, so we do our best to make an impact on this earth while we can. We try to leave behind whatever we can as a way to tell future generations "This was me. I was here. I mattered."
We want to be remembered. Many people, previously including myself, think that being remembered means being famous, or doing some world-changing thing that immortalizes you in history. You have to invent something completely revolutionary, or be super famous or make lots of money, or leave your mark in some other remarkable way.
This is why I wanted to be a famous comedian: to make my mark on society and make an impact so substantial that I would never be forgotten.
However, as I get older, I question if this is really the only way to be remembered or the only way to make your life matter. Making an impact and being remembered doesn't mean you have to leave an impression on everyone; maybe it just applies to the people in your life.
Living a so-called "normal" life used to be the antithesis of what I wanted for myself. Why would I want to be like everybody else, a simple cog in the machine? Why would anyone want their existence to be so remarkably average?
As I mature and expand my horizons, I think that I might have gotten it wrong. Maybe a fulfilling life doesn't mean you have to be revered and admired by everyone. Maybe it just means making an impact on friends who care about you, on a family who loves you and having a job you love that allows you to have a positive effect on people in your community, however small that impact may be.
We all have this desire to be more than we are as if the life we've been given simply isn't enough for us. In the end, perhaps there's nothing wrong with being like everybody else.
Maybe we don't have to be famous and rich and huge for our lives to have to mean; just because we didn't make it big or get rich doesn't mean we don't matter, or were unimportant. Somewhere out there, there is someone who cares about you, someone who loves you, someone who thinks you matter.
The next time you feel the existential dread of one day being forgotten, that pit in your stomach gnawing at you telling you that your life is useless and doesn't matter, as I used to, remember this: we can find meaning in the people we care about, the jobs we do, and what and who we love.
Those things matter to us, and there are people in this world who you are important too. It might not be millions of people, but that just makes all of your relationships more personal, more meaningful, and if that's the only meaning that I'm going to get out of my life, then I'm okay with that.
