Member-only story
Quixotic And Hardheaded
After trying unsuccessfully to give the public what we think it wants, we finally just decide to be ourselves. All those strangers probably just wanted our true selves making our best creations anyway. We needn’t have fretted over our inability to twist ourselves into a pretzel for them. They just want to hear our full throated passion.
What’s that? No personal energies fitting that description? Then we have some soul searching to do. We may not have felt energies of that sort since the age of two.
I go by the belief that I didn’t come here to flail around in lukewarm indecision for a lifetime. If I was equipped with certain sensibilities and abilities, it was because I am supposed to use them. The older I get the more that idea seems fundamental to my life.
I can’t think of a reason to deny yourself the right to follow your passions and talents. Of course the world will tell you to be practical and twist yourself into a pretzel. We expect that. And I know it’s not so simple to just shrug and go your own way. There is marriage and family-making. There are mortgages and car maintenance. There is “what will the neighbors think.”
It takes a certain steel, it takes sacrifice. There are tradeoffs, sacrifices, losses. Passion exacts its payments.
