There are over seven billion people in the world. Seven
billion people exist, all with their own families, all with their own dreams,
all with their own hopes and aspirations. Seven billion all have written their
own stories in which they are the main character.
And these seven billion dream and dream. They want to be
presidents and CEOs, sports stars and celebrities. They want to be billionaires
or have billions of fans or the power to kill a billion people without too much
consequence.
And most of these seven billion will continue dream and
dream with nothing to do but continue dreaming. Only a relative handful will
ever accomplish or even come close to what they wished for.
But we need it to be that way. Not everyone can be a Backstreet
Boy or a Congressman or a Tech Mogul. If that were the case, we’d all starve to
death or run out of clothes or energy or we’d all die from some virus that
dwells in public bathrooms.
There are entire factories dedicated to the most inane
things. I get this feeling of immense confusion whenever I get on an airplane
and use that plastic tray table in front of me. Someone designed that thing.
Someone built it, created a mold, watched an assembly line machine pour the
plastic and someone checked the quality of the tray table before bolting it to
the back of this airplane seat. And these people aren’t necessarily schlubs
without educations or reasons to have hopes or aspirations.
Someone went through advanced schooling, learned how to
draft design documents on a computer in order to build the mold for a piece of
plastic crap that some economy class chattel uses to prop up those stupid wedge
pillows. And someone else went through the same trouble in order to redesign
the previously designed tray table to make it more aerodynamic or lighter or
more resilient or some such bullshit. And there’s some other poor sap who went
to college and got a degree in Public Administration or Management or Communications
in order to oversee the factory floor that produces the special plastic squares
necessary for airplane travel.
This is how billions of the seven billion spend their lives.
They make/design/oversee the production of those paper toilet covers for public
restrooms. They paint the lines in parking garages. They bolt together deck
furniture.
And I have trouble getting out of bed for class every
morning.
How are the promising dreams that so many people have
reconciled with the cold reality. Are they supposed to be passionate about this
stuff? I always assume that the people who get frothed up whenever they talk
about the latest TPS reports they just filed or fly into a rage complaining
about the new design of the Swiffer WetJet mop or swell with pride whenever
they are reminded about how important their contribution as a code-monkey
software engineer is to society are just so depressed that their minds mistake despair
for joy.[1]
But it seems better that we can be happy, even if we must go
through a torturous process in order to create that happiness, in order to
create that meaning. Dreams suck because they don’t come true. They can’t,
either because we’re born in a country without clean drinking water or we are
called on by society to fill some pointless job. The government needs taxes.
The cities need clean streets. They don’t need too many teenaged pop stars.
That’s unfortunate for the more than seven billion of us
that don’t have curly blonde hair and easy access to auto-tune.
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