As an English major, I get a lot of people asking me "What are you going to do with that?" and I never really know how to respond because I think it's obvious. As an English major I get to deal in ideas and the human heart and human nature as a whole. What's more practical than trying to understand human nature? It governs everything. It always has and always will.
Anyhow, this got me thinking about how our society seems to be becoming more and more focused on practicality. Does it do something? Can you do something? Does it make good money? Do you have skills? Will it make a good career? Oh, and there's another thing. We're obsessed with having a good career, like a good career is somehow the end-all be-all of life. Now, a good career, of course, can be a good thing, but it does not automatically give your life value.
In college especially, even if not our professors, the people around us make us very conscious about being practical people. It's out of concern for our well-beings and futures, but I wonder if it's also kind of dangerous. Is it always best to be practical?
Practicality is such a small area of exploration and knowledge. What are you losing if you must always be practical?
Practicality seems to me to be the grind of life. It's the doing and the grit and being economical. It's not bad, but it's such a small area of life. And besides, besides that, I know I'm not that old, but the things that I look back on as being extremely valuable are almost never the practical things that I choose to do. An English major is not a very a practical major, but I am so grateful for choosing it because I have learned so much and I feel that the value of my life has increased because of it. A long-distance relationship is so incredibly impractical that it's frustrating, but it's also one of the best decisions I've ever made. It's not very practical to learn how to ride horses, but I would not be the person I am today if I had not done that. A creative writing major is arguably even more impractical than an English major, and I have that one too, but I am learning how to articulate my ideas, and that is priceless.
I mean, I doubt you'll look back on your life and ask "Was I practical?" or go "Well, my life must have been positively wonderful because I had a great career." We'll look back and ask "Was I happy?"
It's not always the impractical things that give us happiness, but they certainly expand our experience for perceiving what makes us happy. It gives us more so we can deepen the experience of living.
We can't always be impractical, but we certainly must not always be practical. If impractical things can make life richer, if they can lead you to understanding people, if they make you happy enough that the practical doesn't seem too bad, then aren't they quite practical?
