Case scenario. You’re eating family dinner on a Friday night. You don’t normally attend family dinners however your grandmother insisted and so you’ve decided to forgo your usual pizza and Netflix duo and attend just one dinner with the people that you’ve always been told that you’re related to, but you’re really not sure. People say hello, you politely reply. You fill your plate quietly and begin to eat silently, hoping that the topic of conversation will not fall on you. You know from experience where the topic of conversation will fall if it does happen to land on you.
Your great aunt looks up and asks, “So, what are your plans after graduation?” You freeze. After almost an entire dinner of avoiding this dreaded question, it has so arison. You take a deep breathe and answer as quickly as possible. You proclaim your college plans and intended major, quickly stuffing chicken casserole into your face to indicate that you no longer wish to speak. And then, it happens. A scoff. “And what do you plan on doing with that?”
We live in a world in which practical and impractical careers have been broadly defined for us. The practical list, lawyer, doctor, teacher, nurse, secretary. The impractical list, actress, singer, freelance writer, hockey player, world famous food critic. We have been taught that, in order to maintain a happy and well financed future, we have to pick from the practical list. When someone asks about our future, we not only think of our plans, but also a defense for our plans if they are attacked or ridiculed. What I have come to discover after much deliberation regarding my future, is that no one has to pick from the practical list. If someone thinks that your plans of establishing and managing your own chain of restaurants is crazy, don’t object. Simply prove them wrong and do it. If someone thinks that your plans of finding the cure to a seemingly incurable disease and providing vaccines to an entire third world country is insane, don’t object. Simply prove them wrong and do it.
Be a doer and not a sayer. It is not necessary to defend our dreams through words, because defending them through positive actions is so much stronger. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, “Well done is better than well said.” And so the next time your great aunt questions your future at family dinner, don’t object. Just prove her wrong and do it.
