To Be Or Not To Be

Is "adult life" really this boring?

I like my new job. The people are cool, the projects have importance and the atmosphere is very pleasant. I have lunch with someone almost every day, unless I have too much work. They don't mind if I come in a bit late; my boss is cool. It's all good and I'm really glad I took it, actually.

That's not the issue at hand at all. Office space is a part of life, and computer screens have clouded our vision forever, yadda yadda yadda. Nobody's complaining.

The question is that every day, when I get on the train, I see the same miserable businessmen in suits. They're miserable because generally they are wearing ties and jackets in 85-degree weather, unable to tear away from their Blackberry set even at 7:46 in the morning, and are probably worried about the Dow Jones and other randomized numbers that were created by humans just like them to mean something greater than life itself.

I am simply wondering how many people out there are truly content with the 9-to-5, 1.5-hour commuter existence. Sure, the money is worth it; we all know it is, and that's why everyone does it, I suppose, and my turn will come, too. (The real earning part, I mean.) I wonder, though: how many of those empty faces that I see on the train each morning have bought real happiness with their 9-to-5, subsidized 2-week-per-year-vacation existence? And if they haven't, how do they convince themselves -- because there have to have been be silly romantics among them -- that this, indeed, is what they really wanted?

I know children sometimes wish to be doctors or firemen or astronauts. In my case, up until I was about ten, I wanted to be a singer. After that, I wanted to be a writer. At twelve I was certain I'd become a graphic designer. Then, at fourteen, I wanted to be a writer again, and kept up that hope until about age eighteen, when I decided I wanted to be an editor instead. At twenty I decided that in fact, I liked writing better than editing (because I never even had the patience to read my own writing over) but neither was really a true passion (whatever that means). Now I'm nearly twenty two and I don't know what I want to be. Probably not one of the dudes on the train and for sure, having nothing to do with any type of math or any type of coding.

I wonder how many children, though, hope to be office managers or developers in C++ or senior accountants. With all due respect for those professions, don't get me wrong! Even more so, because they aren't professions for dreamers. They are professions for the people that want them.

Perhaps the real question is, at what point in life is one obligated to become a realist?