By Stone Murphy
From the moment we are asked, “what do you want to be when you grow up,” we are conditioned to believe that our lives are a journey with a destination. As we grow up, our society continually reaffirms this notion with a macrosystem that rewards the different types of labor based on how much capital each one generates rather than the nobility or difficulty of the profession.
For example, most would agree with the assertion that soldiers should be paid more than professional athletes. However, we accept that this is impossible on the premise that sports generate billions of dollars of capital while warfare depletes billions of dollars of capital. Because we live under these circumstances our childhood mentors are pressed to help us find our spark, otherwise we become adults without a passion for any type of capital-generating service which we can provide to make a living.
Disney and Pixar’s ‘Soul’ conveys this message in a lighthearted manner as the characters live in a universe where a soul cannot be born on Earth without having found its spark. Once the soul has found its spark, according to the film, an individual can be born with that soul and it is the soul’s job to reconnect with its spark in the physical world.
Jamie Foxx’s character is set up by the writers as having had difficulty truly connecting with his spark in the physical world, and his conflict is resolved when a near-death experience concludes with Foxx’s character having found his spark just in time to get a second chance at life.
I disagree with this idea of life having a determined purpose and instead am inclined to agree with the philosopher Alan Watts who said that “life is not a journey.” Watts contributed to the effort of popularizing Eastern philosophy with Western audiences in his time. While many of his ideas are considerably pseudo-scientific, the idea that ‘life is not a journey’ is a fundamental lesson about human nature that our society should better consider and incorporate if we are to have happier and more genuinely purposeful lives.
To incorporate this lesson into our own lives we must first understand the alternative method of being. A popularized metaphor for Watts’ long-winded explanation of this alternative is that life is a dance. The distinction between the idea that life is a journey and that life is a dance is that the point of a journey is the destination while the point of a dance is the dance itself.
The purpose of a dance, unless you are on Dancing with the Stars, is to be present, to enjoy the moment, and to enjoy the company. The purpose of life should also be to be present, to enjoy the moment, and to enjoy the company. Of course, being present and within the moment does not mean one is to become lackadaisical and without any purpose. If this were the case in a dance, then the dancer would appear clumsy as they stumble and fail to coordinate with their partners.
Since life is like a dance, we must find purpose like a dancer. A dancer, unlike a journeyman, does not begin with an end destination. Even choreographed dance artists create their routines without an original end in mind. Instead, a dancer finds purpose through using their intuition to respond optimally to the natural reward pathways in their brains. They do this through making decisions based on present ideas derived from experience and communication rather than returning to a predetermined notion of what their purpose should be.
We should do the same thing in our day-to-day lives. Identifying with our intuition can lead us to healthy habits and goals. Adhering to an initial goal and suppressing second thoughts is dogmatic and ultimately less productive. Hopefully this metaphor has been well outlined, because now I hope to explain the, ‘so what.’
As a University community, many of us have been through an education system for over a dozen years that has allowed us to explore a wide variety of academic, social, and physical domains. Whether you are a student, an employee, or a professor these domains are still open to exploration and pursuit. This is what many of us fail to remember as we return to our workplace or sign up for another semester of classes. Formal education ends, but the pursuit of what formal education entails is everlasting.
This message should most heavily be heeded by undergraduate students who believe they have spent too much money or too much time on a given major. Those of us still learning must remember to pursue both what is good for us in addition to what we want.
If you are studying to be an engineer but have dreams of being the next Sherlock Holmes, then do not drop your major but do sign up for a few Law and Society or Criminal Justice classes as an upperclassman. If you are studying as a Philosopher but have dreams of starting a rock band, again, do not drop your major. Your prospective career opportunities in this case are low as is. It still would not hurt to sign up for a musical arts elective or create a University Post about starting a rock band.
If we continue to work for what is good for us, then we should also be able to explore what we want. If you are not exploring, then either our societal structure has really stripped some of us of the creative energy necessary to explore or you are just being lazy.
Kimberly Pesaturo is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Western New England University Department of Pharmacy. She is also slated to be an inaugural TEDxWesternNewEnglandUniversity speaker on March 20. Her talk will outline the psychological phenomenon of Imposter Syndrome and explain why each person is uniquely qualified to pursue their creative passion.
After having received degrees in pharmacy, Kim has employed the lessons that she will be conveying on the TEDx stage to start her own company that publishes a literary magazine. The company, called Loud Coffee Press, in addition to being the executed product of Kim’s ideas, also exemplifies the philosophy that I have attempted to interpret in this article. We should all strive to be a little more like Mrs. Pesaturo in our search for what we want in life. Above all, we should keep on dancing.
