Letter to a friend

Subject: Before they leave my head

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I'd like to share a few thoughts! About what you were pondering, with regards to your career (whether you ought to stop working on so many projects and settle down as a full professor somewhere, or focus more deeply on just one project, etc).

Now, I don't know the answer to this question, because it's your life. But I've been figuring out some principles that I'm trying to put to use in my own life, that could perhaps help you think about this question.

Prestige is not all it's cracked up to be. I first began to realize this when I would get awards, and would feel thrilled for a moment but then the happiness would fade all too quickly. At first I thought it meant I just needed bigger awards (with my twisted self-esteem, as soon as I got an award I "realized" that the award must be pretty worthless/easy to get after all), but bigger awards didn't bring bigger happiness. But I was still driven to do something "impressive" because I just could not imagine the disappointment of living an unimpressive (non-prestigious) life. I joined a prestigious teaching program after I graduated; part of what drew me to it was knowing that people respected it and would be impressed with me for doing it. And boy did this teach me the lesson good and hard: I was SO depressed that year, that I finally really realized that no amount of prestige and respect was worth feeling that awful. I'd finally been humbled (in the best way possible), by being brought to a point of desperation that helped me see what really mattered in life, which was my own happiness. Prestige didn't bring me happiness and it never will; external respect didn't bring me happiness and it never will; doing things because I thought I "should" do them didn't bring me happiness and it never will. My "should" drive had, in fact, crippled my ability to work; the unhappier I was, the less I was able to do. There are people like your friend, who do everything out of sheer force of will, like wringing the last drop of water from a towel; you don't want to live like that, and you know it. There are people like me, who lose the ability to even act as they lose happiness; you don't want to live like that either. Prestige is not worth it. Happiness IS worth it, true self-respect where you yourself fully feel the value of what you're doing IS worth it; impressing others, even those you love, is not.

I was pondering why you love your projects so much, and the best guess I came up with (please do forgive me if I'm wrong), is that you love the feeling of creation, of manifesting your extraordinary potential into real, tangible creations in the form of helping to build the opportunities and thus lives of others. Whether it is for that reason or for another, please be careful before giving up something you love so much, something so joyful and life-affirming. There could potentially be valid reasons to change the course of your life; perhaps you want to focus more on a particular project, perhaps you truly love academic study enough that being a professor would be equally fulfilling, perhaps you want a family. But don't don't give it up to make someone else happy, to make someone else approve of you, to get status or prestige; such constraint is a kind of soul-death. Live a life you love, it's the only thing worth it. Truly truly.

Kate