I've been thinking today about a person's potential and his/her responsibility to himself (and others) to utilise it. I don't think it's something a lot of people will necessarily think about too often, but it was mentioned to me recently and so it has been on my mind. I was having a conversation with somebody last Friday about something innocuous when the subject came up.
"You're not much of a consumer, are you Phil? You don't really buy much", this person said.
"Yeah I know," I replied, "advertisements are wasted on me. Although there was one thing recently which I was really interested in buying; a poster, it was."
"Really?" was the response.
"Yeah, it was..." I paused, failing to find the words. "Well it's difficult to describe. Picture... In fact, no, I have the book with me." I reached in to my bag and produced a book I had been reading. It was Richard Dawkins' latest. I flipped through the pages, skating past diagrams of the vagus nerve, mammalian skeletons and one candid photo of an adult dugong. I quickly found my poster. "This thing is called the Hillis Plot. Basically it's a diagram showing our genetic relatedness to all the other species of life on Earth, right back to the first instance of life."
I pointed at the diagram "here we are and over here would be other apes, here would be mammals like dogs and you can see, for instance, that we're more closely related to fungi then we are to bacteria. And this is just about 3,000 species, nowhere near the tens of millions we know about."
I looked up expecting to see the same wide-eyed intrigue that grabbed me when I first saw the diagram. Instead I saw something resembling disappointment. "Wow, that's such a waste," said my friend.
Of course, I was confused; "what do you mean?"
"I think that for somebody as smart and enthusiastic as you to choose a simple life with a simple job over something that used all of your potential is a waste."
Earlier in our conversation, when asked what I'd like from the future, I admitted that a job like the one I had in the school would be fine. "It was easy, I was great at it and I had a laugh." I said that if it paid a little better then it would be perfect. As it turns out, some people think you're obligated to dream of a life which most challenges your skills. Not a lot more was said on this subject, but I've been thinking about it.
Since this conversation I've asked others about the issue. Half of the people think that a person should take a job which suitably taxed their abilities while the other half said that personal happiness trumped social obligation. I've always been with the second group. I thought most people would be. Instead it seems a lot of people think you owe it to yourself, or other people, to use every iota of knowledge and experience you've carved for yourself.
My thoughts have always been the same though. Even from a young age, when people asked what I wanted to be when I was older, I always thought the same thing: happy. And what if you don't need your degree for that? What if you can get that from your blue-collar colleagues and not from your pursuit to nail Cold Fusion?
Should your happiness mean less to you if every day isn't a struggle? Why are people so eager to tell you what you should do with your life? Part of me thinks it's down to vicariousness but even that makes only hypothetical sense. Either way, I think that once you've formed your own opinion there's not much point in labouring on about it. It will change by itself or it won't. I think I'm going to go with my instincts in the meantime.
Incidentally, the most common career I'm told by other people that I should have is one as an educator. Apparently I am both gifted with enthusiasm about certain subjects and an ability to explain. If I liked talking to groups or could command respect of strangers then it would be almost perfect.
