Many years ago, one of my students, the daughter of a medical doctor with a successful practice, was talking to me in her senior year about how much she was thinking she would enjoy being a teacher.
I *gently* suggested she also consider in her thinking how much she enjoyed her car (a brand new, fully loaded, cream-colored Pontiac Grand Am with matching leather interior, as I remember), the new and very stylish cashmere sweater she was wearing, her harp playing (as I remember her instrument cost more than my car and seemed to require an SUV just to haul it around), being able to participate in dressage competitions, and the many other financial amenities she enjoyed as the good doctor’s daughter. She barely paused in her catalogue of the anticipated joys of teaching, but seemed a little put off by my suggestions at the time. Ultimately she chose a nursing career, married a doctor, left nursing, taught classes at her church, bought and competed with a top dressage thoroughbred, and became a parent volunteer in the schools her children attended, most of these choices, by the way, were identical to those her mother had made.
The girl may have been happier as a public school teacher. She may even have had a greater impact on many more children, but if she grew to be anything like her mother that isn’t necessarily the case. As I remember, her mother was one of the principal organizers of our Project Graduation, a program staffed and funded by parent volunteers that has benefited several thousand Brazoswood students for more than a decade. A vow of poverty is not an absolute prerequisite to doing good or for that matter to being an artist.
I encourage my students as they are thinking about colleges/careers to consider whether the financial rewards of being a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or maybe some capitalistic/corporate career might be a better choice for them. Many of course want to act or work in “the business” and are surprised when I appear to discourage it. I tell them they would be more likely to afford all the gadgets they have, the kind of clothes they wear, and the activities they enjoy in a career where more than just the top ten percent earn income above the poverty level. Those who assert they will be rich and famous as actors usually face a Socratic style string of questions designed to bring them to the realization that what they really want is to be well-known, powerful, and rich. Whereupon I suggest they consider dealing drugs as an easier path to their life goal. I believe they get the point, though they seldom acknowledge it.
On the other hand, I also ask them to consider the lives of some of my doctor friends, who--it has always seemed to me--do not like being doctors and would rather spend their time doing something more artistic. Unfortunately, my friends also seem to really like all the stuff that can be bought with a doctor's income and can’t quite make the choice to leave it all. There is nothing inherently wrong with choosing a career that increases the likelihood of a wealthy lifestyle (excepting of course the doubtful morality of choosing a career dealing drugs) if it is a choice, but at least one of my friends seems to have backed into that life without making it an intentional choice, and so is grouchy and apparently unhappy so much of the time I feel sorry for him. He seems trapped.
I tell my students that of the hundreds of ways to move into the future there are at least two widely separate ways they might want to ruminate on as they make their career decisions.
(Way #1) Take control and make choices using your best judgment.
If you later find you don't like your choices, either choose to make the best of them with a good spirit (imminently possible--people do this joyfully every day) or summon the courage to take control again and change. Make different choices.
(Way #2) Fall into your future without actually making choices.
Here may lay a sad morass. If you later decide you don't like it, you feel trapped. Or since it wasn’t your choice in the first place, you may fall into denial. You claim to like it even though you really don't. Subsequently you begin to feel inexplicably trapped and miserable. After living that nightmare for a while, it’s almost inevitable you will decide (or in the case of the self-denier, "come to feel") your situation is someone or something's fault other than your own. After faulting anything and or anyone but yourself, you decide (or "come to feel" again) your misery is beyond your control and you are helpless. Finally, you are in full-blown unhappiness. You build unhappiness and resentment toward your situation and everyone you know, and begin to blame others. You spew blame indiscriminately, hitting those closest to you hardest and most. You freak out. You never really know why.
On the other, other hand, another friend told me once if he “had known in college what [he] knew now” he would have gone to dental school in preparation for taking over his father's practice. He and his wife seem to have struggled their whole lives because the career he chose, youth minister, just did not turn out to be the one he, or possibly, they together, could be happy with. Same thing with his wife, she was in the top five or so of her graduating class and never seemed to land in a career where she was comfortable. I think her degree was in teaching but the closest she ever got to that was teacher aid. They have always seemed to drift along from one job--as opposed to a career--to another without really settling in anywhere. To the best of my ability to discern, my friend has kept a pretty good spirit, but he does regret some of his choices.
I don't necessarily recommend my students choose to make the bucks so they can then do and have the things they desire, but it is something they should consider. It is a choice many people make. I think it's a valid choice. It's not the choice I made.
I never expected wealth when I chose teaching. I expected to be frugal on some things so I could spend on others--which is what I have always done. I really believe--and this is so much more a truth than the flippant joke it seems to be--the only true way to be rich is to spend less money than you have, so you always have more than you need. If you can't do that and be happy with the choice, then you should make another choice. I also figured a creative person could always find way to do and have the things he desired even if he didn't really have the bucks to buy them straight up.
Therefore, when I wanted new technology for my children, my family, and myself I went out and took extra jobs. Some of those jobs brought in extra money; others just gave us access to technology we couldn’t afford to buy. Our computer use was never cutting edge, but as I look back, I believe we fell into the category of early adopters.
Over the years, my fondness for travel was filled by all the little short trips my family made to interesting places close by--an exploration of Houston or Galveston is rich if approached creatively. Actually, someone who looks at the world with openness and kindness can find exploring Clute an interesting travel. My fondness for New York City and broader travel was fulfilled by leading student tours and managing to make some travel job or education related.
My desire to do creative work has been filled many ways: by my private writings, by directing, and working on high school and community plays--and to a certain extent by "coaching" original creative work by students. Among my creative writing students are poets and several playwrights, two others write regularly for newspapers and one is a regular columnist. Two of my students have had several short plays performed by other groups, that is they were not self-produced. I still expect one of my young playwrights to produce professionally some day. Several of my acting/theatre students have and/or are now working professionally.
My desire to be a positive blessing for other people has been filled not by big financial donations to charities and causes--though I make many small financial donations--but by teaching at school, church, the Center For The Arts, and by the choices of performance literature I have always made. For a while, I was an elder at our church and that was a good thing, I believe.
If I have regrets, they’re not because I trapped myself in a life I hated and blamed on others.
I did after all at one point take charge and dump teaching to go to law school, thinking my family would be better off if I made more money. I made the choice. In law school, I decided the things I did with my life and my time with my family were more important than the money I could make working as a lawyer sixty billable hours a week, a goal I discovered usually required many more hours than sixty. I took charge again and dumped law school, another choice. Ultimately, not finishing my PhD was yet another choice I made for my family.
The regret I do have is that for a while, I let the vagaries of life shadow my spirit and keep me from doing things I have always chosen to do joyfully, but it’s only a slight regret. I still choose to live under the pall of life's vagaries, but I don't let that keep me from doing things that give me joy. I'm still heart-broken and soul-sick, but rather than that state being the terminal tragedy of my life, I see it as the other side of the great joy I had in great love. There is no regret there and no deep fear of future pain. I believe people who wall themselves off from emotional pain also brick up their capacity for joy. I’ve been hurt. I will probably be hurt again, but I will also love again. It’s my life, my choice, my pain, and also my joy.
