Thursday, November 8, 2012

What do I Desire? What if Money Was No Object?

An amazing lecture from the late Alan Watts.

What do I desire? Be the change that you would like to see in this world.

This is a really great lecture from Alan Watts, a British philosopher. It’s well worth the three minutes to watch. Watts talks about encouraging his students and listeners to do the thing they love most, because there’s no point wasting a lifetime trying to earn enough money to be stable enough to begin doing what you love to do. Better to lead a short life doing what you love than a long life doing what you don’t.



What do you desire? What makes you itch? What sort of a situation would you like?

Let's suppose — I do this often in vocational guidance of students, they come to me and say 'well, er, we're getting out of college and we haven't the faintest idea of what we want to do'. So I always ask the question: What would you like to do if money were no object? What would How would you really enjoy spending your life?

Well, it's so amazing as a result of our kind of educational system, crowds of students say 'well, we'd like to be painters, we'd like to be poets, we'd like to be writers, but as everybody knows you can't earn any money that way.' One other person says 'well, I'd like to live an out of doors life and ride horses.' I said 'Do you wanna teach in a riding school?... er... let's go through with it: what do you want to do?'

When we finally got down to something which the individual says he really wants to do, I would say to him 'You do that and, er, forget the money... er... because if you say that getting the money is the most important thing you will spend your life completely wasting your time... you'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing things you don't like doing... which is stupid!

Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way. And after all if you do really like what you're doing it doesn't matter what it is... you can eventually turn it... you can eventually become a master of it. The only way to become a master of something is to be really with it... and then you'lle be able to get a good feel for whatever it is...

So, don't-don't worry too much... that's everybody —  somebody's interested in everything and anything you can be interested in you'll find out with you... but it's absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don't like... in order to go on spending things you don't like, doing things you don't like, and to teach your children following the same track!

What we are doing is we are bringing up children and educating them to live the same sort of lives we are living... in order that, er, that they would-may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life by bringing up their children to bring up their children to do the same things so it all wretch and no vomit — it never gets there.

And so, therefore it's so important to consider this question: What do I desire?


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1 comment:

  1. I would definitely be a fashion designer or anything related to creativity in some way, such as acting. I certainly admire those who follow their dreams, even though they have to turn them into something else at the end as they do not succeed. For the latter, there are ALWAYS many positive and enjoyable parts in almost every job. The key is to be positive, find them and so we can spend our life doing something that at least we partially like.

    Concerning what we leave to our kids:

    Once a father told his son: “be careful with the path you choose”. His son answered: “you’re the one to be careful… remember I’m only following your steps”.

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