Living the Dream - or the Job
I remember –however vaguely- people asking me when I was maybe three or four years old, what I wanted to ‘be when I grew up.” “Maybe a fireman?” they would ask. “Perhaps a policeman? Or a bus-driver like that guy driving that big bus?” I’m sure it was all in the manner of being polite but was it?
It started to plant in my young mind, the idea that I could only ‘be’ one thing. I could only choose one ‘thing’ that I was to become, and that is what I would identify with for the rest of my life.
Rick the fireman.
Rick the policeman.
Rick the bus driver.
Rick the employee.
Skip about a decade and now I’m in Jr. High School struggling to retain some interest in the banal courses they where teaching me and find my way through the minefield of disciplinary action for seemingly every move I made. I remember in grade nine the guidance councillor calling me into his office and lecturing me severely about the fact that if I did not improve my grades I would never be accepted into University. University? I was how old? Fourteen? University? I couldn’t plan beyond the next weekend coming up. How was I supposed to think about ‘Higher Education’ and University?
It wasn’t long after this episode with the guidance guy, that I was told I would need to plan which courses I would take next year in grade ten. This, I was told, was so that I could direct my studies towards going either to a trade school or to a University. Certain courses you took, laid the groundwork for the path you took, apparently.
Again, I was lost. I had no idea which path to take. The reason for that being that at fifteen I still had no idea which occupation I would choose to work at the rest of my life. In other words, I did not know which J-O-B I wanted to work at for the next forty years or so.
Well, this caused some consternation amongst the teachers, and especially the guidance guy. They acted as if I was slow-witted or something. Who knows, maybe I was? After all, everyone else seemed to know exactly which job they wanted to live their lives doing. Some wanted to be heavy-duty mechanics, some wanted to be Doctors, some dentists, accountants, millwrights, etc… No one seemed to want their own business though. Of course, they all did want to be rich! I wonder now, years later, how many of them are?
The next move – since the educators had to move me along the assembly line of preparing me for the world – again came from the guidance guy. “You’re pretty good at math,” he told me. “You could be an accountant or an engineer maybe.” I had no idea what these people did of course, they where just ‘vocations’ thrown out there at me. ‘No,” I said, “I’m not interested.” Another year went by and oh! Horrid young man that I was, I still did not know what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
Somewhere along the line in grade ten, I heard about a job called ‘Game Biologist.” This captured my young mind as I knew by then all I wanted was to be outdoors and not in a city. So I started checking in to how you become a Game Biologist. This seemed to be made for me!
The next thing I discovered was that you needed about seven years of a University education to become one. That ended that. Back to the drawing board of indecision. I no longer wanted anything to do with being a Game biologist and having my college certificate hanging on my wall to impress the world.
Interestingly enough, as the guidance guy – and others – were showing me how to ‘research’ theses occupations, no one EVER sat my young butt down and asked me what kind of a lifestyle I wanted to live as an adult. What kind of a house did I want to live in? What kind of vehicles to drive? Did I want to travel a lot or have a home in the country and raise animals maybe? Did I want a big family or small? Since money dictates how we live, how much money did I want to make each year?
No one pointed those things out to me. They just kept asking which J-O-B I wanted to spend my life at.
I dropped out of school in grade ten. I just simply lost interest in the material they were teaching and the direction they were trying to push me into. It all seemed totally irrelevant to me. Besides, I’d discovered the pool hall and being able to work a job for the whopping sum of $1.25 per hour. This was an incredible ten dollars a day and I could see myself buying that ranch I started to dream about. I just knew one day I would have that big cattle ranch in the Cariboo of B.C. and raises horses and purebred Hereford cattle. I just knew it!
Well, I never got the ranch. I did own a horse once. But I never got the ranch. I did what everyone else does. I kept working one job after another. Some paid more, some were more fun than others, but they where all jobs and they all had a ceiling on the earnings I could produce and the time I had leftover after work to have a life.
I should say, I sort of did that. In my case I heard of a great occupation in the Yukon as a Big Game Guide. I went to the Yukon, found out who were the best guides, worked with them and learned from them, and so was occupied successfully in that field for many years. The problem was that it was seasonal employment, so along the way to fill in and to keep food on the table for the family I now had, I worked whatever jobs came my way. Like everyone else, I took what was available to me and let it dictate my lifestyle and how I lived. I did start my own business in the form of a trap-line though, and I ended up pretty much living a great lifestyle. But! Money dictates your choices in this life, and since my income was still based on my efforts to produce it, I was still very limited as to choices. But the lifestyle was interesting and as a game-guide, I was around a lot of rich men who I learned a great deal from. The main one being that you had to have your own business if you ever wanted to gain control over your time and your income. Ironically, during this time, even though I never even had my GED yet, the game biologists (remember the seven yeas of University?) were now asking me for information and about wildlife habits.
But back to the topic at hand here, I realize now that the way in which we educate people kills their personal dreams. Instead of ‘planting’ the idea in young people’s minds that they should choose a ‘career’ (fancy word for job) early, we should be asking them a totally different set of questions.
We should be asking them what sort of lifestyle they will choose. What are their dreams, goals, and ambitions for their life? How do they see themselves living their lives?
In other words, we should be asking them what kind of a life they want. - not what kind of J-O-B they want. And in order to encourage that, we should be telling them that when they finally do pick an area of income production for themselves that they desire to pursue, then to find someone else who is creating their income that way and go interview him (or her.) Find out what kind of a house he lives in, the car he drives, hours per week he has to sell to his occupation and how many hours a week he gets to spend as he wishes to. In other words, is this man living the lifestyle the student would choose for himself? If the answer is that this occupation, job, or career is not going to produce the style of living which the student is after, then he should reconsider pursuing it. Does that not just make sense?
When I finally applied this method myself, I realized that the only choice I had which would produce the income I wanted which would allow me to have the choices I wanted in regards to my own lifestyle –and retirement-, I realized that I had to have my own business in order to achieve the things I dreamed of. But what business? Soon I discovered those who did have the lifestyle I wanted and started to associate with them and learn how I too, could get free of the wage-slave mentality of an employee.
So yes, we are educating our children to fail. In the school system today they are being taught that going to college or university is going to give them their “Dream job” (I’ve yet to know what that is!) and so own a home and live happily ever after.
Nothing could be farther from the truth in today’s world.
Education today has nothing to do with your income.
