Love Your Life

 Having a job where I feel rewarded and truly enjoy working, even if it has low pay, is more important to me than having a college degree and good pay if I’m going to hate every day I work.
  I have an opinion about how careers affect my happiness, and I don’t understand why whenever I tell someone that I want to be a translator or a dancer, their first reaction is to tell me that I should consider something else because I won’t make a lot of money and I won’t REALLY be happy. It seems to me that people have the wrong idea of happiness. I don’t think that money should be the biggest determining factor in someone’s joy in life, and I see no point in having a high paying job if I’m going to hate working in that field. I should be able to have the opportunity to be happy and have a job I enjoy, even if it doesn’t “make enough money.”

  I think people these days work towards a job that they would hate to wake up and go to because in America we are so financially driven about everything. People are focused on getting a degree for a job that would make them more money because society has trained us to believe that we should value our bank accounts more than ourselves. To me, this doesn’t make sense. As a child we are taught to chase our dreams and chose a path in life that will be rewarding and then at some point in our adolescence our thought process is changed, and we are rewired to think that we will only be happy in life if we make a lot of money and buy a house in the suburbs.

  When I get older, and I make a life for myself, I don’t want to feel like I won’t be happy unless I have a well-paying job and a PHD. I would much rather be working for low pay and love my job and my life than have to live in an unending cycle of despair. I understand that with a high income rate I would be able to afford more of the luxuries that life has to offer, but at some point in life those luxuries become meaningless if you spend every day looking forward to your next vacation.
    I’m not saying that you shouldn’t go to college and get that PHD, I’m just saying that if you realize that that’s not the kind of life you want, don’t let society push you into living a life you don’t want to live. Being unhappy all the time takes all the meaning out of living and life’s too short to live that way. If being relaxed every day and being in a work field that you love is your fate, then go for it and don’t let society’s unrealistic ideas of happiness kill your dreams.