Every time when someone asks what I do, I say I tutor, I paint and write. the normal response is, “Do you sell your painting? Or get money from your writing?” I usually shake my head. The next reply is, “Well then, that’s not work.” I do spend a substantial amount of time editing, rewriting, painting and repainting. For me, that’s as true as work as someone flipping burgers at McDonald’s, or selling stocks in the Internet. But we have degraded life or work to mean — “Doing something you dislike or miserable in order to make money.”
Unless suddenly my paintings are selling like hotcakes or I become a JK Rowling — then all the hours, days and weeks, and months and years I have invested will never be “converted” magically into work.
I sometimes try to protest, “but I work seriously”. I take my painting and writing seriously. The response is often, “That’s just something you like to do, that’s not work.” From then on, I realize we speak on different wave lengths and the conversation better gears towards say “Have you tried this restaurant in town?” or “Where do you go for vacation next?”
The most difficult thing, trust me, to live a life that you want is not finding money, finding time, finding your passion. Trust me, the most difficult thing is to combat with people’s views that life is supposed to SUCK. Or SUCK BIG TIME. To live a life you want is considered more or less a mortal sin. To live a life you don’t want, instead, can earn you a free ticket to the “Club.” There you find people’s acceptance and recognition.
The sense of guilt of loving what you do, of living a desirable way (well at least to my own desires), and radiating joy is big. People tend to smile and say “You’re lucky”, and then tell you a thousand reasons why they can’t be that way (and therefore you should feel bad about your life), and why life isn’t possible and goodness is not available.
I don’t deny that life is full of challenges and hardships. I worked in the summer vacation at the age of 11 in a bank as a janitor. I have had over two decades of bulimia in record. I was not born with a silver spoon or a Hermes handbag. But to write an equation of {life = work = sucks} too soon and early is unfair to yourself. And to write an equation of {happy work + happy life = that person is plain lucky and selfish} is unfair to that person.
I don’t deny the blessings of life somehow. But don’t just brush off the things you don’t see behind the scene of everyone’s life. More, don’t just say “She or he is lucky”. Give yourself a chance to refuse to believe life has to suck for good. Life is for someone out there as much as it is for you.
