A few years ago, my mother gave me the fortune from inside her fortune cookie. She didn’t say anything, just gave it to me and walked away. It read: “Doing what you love is freedom. Loving what you do is happiness.” Coming at a time in my life where I felt as if I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted to do, these two sentences struck something in me, so much so that I put it in the back of my phone case.
I’ve always wanted to be a performer of some kind; this I’ve always known. As I grew up, the world seemed to tell me otherwise — not because I no longer enjoyed performing. Rather, it wasn’t a feasible career financially. After a while, the world won. I convinced myself that I wasn’t good enough to make a name for myself and if I couldn’t do that, there was no point in following my dreams. The most important fact in choosing a career had to be money.
After entering college undecided, I eventually declared a major in political science. I didn’t necessarily love it, but I didn’t hate it. It was a “real major” that had a decent job outlook and could serve as a good base to becoming a lawyer, something I thought I could be good at and would pay very well. I was finally getting my feet under me, but I wasn’t happy. I didn’t care about my schoolwork, my grades slipped and I spent more time doing theater and a cappella than actual homework. I started to lose myself in pursuit of a future I believed the world wanted for me.
Simultaneously, I had declared a second major: theatre studies. To me, those classes were entirely different. There, I wanted to learn. With theatre, my grades didn’t slip. I did my readings. I spoke up in class. I had fun. I was doing what I loved. I felt free. I decided that, after finishing my political science degree, I would audition for acting conservatories to hone my craft and finally follow my heart. This way, I wouldn’t waste the time and money I had spent on political science; I would have a “real degree” to fall back on if the whole actor thing didn’t work out.
But one day, that plan changed. The summer before my sophomore year, it hit me: why was I putting off my own future — my own happiness — just because someone else wanted something different for me? I wanted to be an actor, not a politician or a lawyer or anything else. Sure, I might live paycheck to paycheck for the rest of my life, but who cares? I’ve never loved anything the way I love theatre.
The further we descend into a capitalistic society, the more everyone stresses the idea of “following the money.” Everyone is hard-wired to chase after whatever can provide more money, since money means status and security. Society even uses money as a reference point to success, essentially invalidating any other reason for doing anything in life. Even the way we discuss our lives is in terms of money as superior rather than how we feel emotionally.
Careers relying on subjectivity become frowned upon and discouraged, unless you’re a once-in-a-generation talent. Very few are encouraged to pursue becoming a professional athlete if you only came off the bench for your high school soccer team. If you don’t show exceptional talent, you are supposed to become “rational” and be replaced by something worth more money than happiness. It could be your one true love in the world, but everyone will convince you it’s not a possibility. You need to suck it up and conform to the mundanity of a nine to five. While many people do find fulfillment in business or STEM-based careers, just as many find their lives draining to the corporate machine.
The point of life is to live it. You only get one, so why waste it doing something that brings you disdain? The happiest people I’ve met are those who stay true to themselves in both their personal and professional lives. Money isn’t necessarily happiness. Happiness should be the journey you can look back upon, no matter how long it takes. There is no timeline for happiness. Countless celebrities began their careers late in their lives and still found success and joy.
This year, I switched my major into the acting BFA, a program that takes four years to complete, meaning I’ll be in college for a total of six years. I’m terrified of feeling like I’m being left behind by my friends and the rest of the world, but it’s the happiest I’ve ever been in college. Whenever I begin to feel lost, wondering if it will all be worth it, I look in the back of my phone case at those two sentences and remember that, at the end of the day, my happiness will be worth far more than my paycheck.