WISHFUL THINKING

My friends and I love playing this game: If Money Wasn’t An Issue, What Would You Be Doing? It started in our college days, born from the exasperation with accounting and math classes, and has cascaded over to our post-school/working lives.

It’s a pretty amusing game and people could come up with really fun answers. I remember hearing geisha, dog walker, be in the gym all day, groupie of some artist, stalk Johnny Depp, leaf-picker in Japan (this is a legitimate occupation). One of the all-time top answers: be a bum. I wanted to be a tomb raider (staying true to my Lara Croft fantasies). And if most of us had our way, there wouldn’t be enough URLs and TV channels for our travel shows and food blogs.

Our replies are often deliberately the “run away from the real world” type and usually merit a good laugh from us. After all, the game is designed to escape the burden of work stress, or, back then, exams. 

But there are times when we do take the question less humorously. 

An entrepreneur friend said that he’d travel the country, educating teachers and paying them more. A professor friend said he would pump money into the country’s academic research facilities. A batchmate said she would finance a group that would improve how the media works in this country and steer it away from giving the public trashy journalism. An accountant friend told me that he wanted to build a cinema where he’ll show good local and foreign films for free.

When friends give more serious answers like these, we all breathe a collective figurative (sometimes literal) sigh. The game has a knack of telling us what desires and causes are nearest to our hearts. This is where the game moves from escapism to expression of full-hearted dreams. 

The game has a two-fold emotional effect on me. I feel a sense of pride and hope knowing that friends want changes for themselves and for the world. That in the midst of intellectual disagreements and debates, and personal struggles to survive, they still care about “the bigger scheme of things” and look beyond selfish gain. Most importantly, it tells me that we strive to be more than just workhorses and machines. 

But it also makes me feel a little sad as it's often apparent that many of us are uncertain about how to start on these things. I sense frustration in them and in myself as it seems that these dreams can only stay in the confines of the game unless we get our hands on enormous amounts of wealth. That way, we can quit our jobs and devote all our energy and resources towards those aspirations we so want to work on. It totally makes aense why it’s easy to wave a white flag and say, “That’s it. It’s all wishful thinking. It’s just a game.”

Last year, I was finally about to wave that white flag. Then a few brave friends began to change my mind. 

Musician friends who are in med school or the banking industry continue to music and reaching out to fellow musicians. Other friends who want to teach are doing so by taking part-time teaching jobs in their alma maters. And I have lost count of those who lend their time and talents to non-profit organisations that have missions similar to theirs. Some have even started their own groups.

My college roommate who has always dreamed of making it big in the entertainment industry, started joining theatre workshops and is now dabbling in theatre production. So while holding a sales job in a multinational company, she’s finding ways to do something about her show business dreams and just may end up helping the local theatre scene.

It sounds dangerously like we’re all unhappy with our day jobs and present careers. But it’s not as simplistic as that. Some of us actually like, even love, our jobs. But, as attested to by the game, there are things that we cannot shake off — things that would render us feeling incomplete if eliminated from our lives or left to rot in stagnation. 

I’m starting to think that maybe this is what they say about never letting go of your dreams no matter what happens. Because dreams can come true. Perhaps the fulfillment comes in different forms or the pursuit is done in ways that are much less direct than we initially imagined, but they can be realized. There are ways to accomplish them, even if you just start with steps tinier than baby steps.

I guess this is one of the reasons why I jumped in when my friend, WG 2 who posts on Thursdays, proposed that we start this blog together. I have idolized writers for a very long time. Every now and then, I did imagine myself becoming one. Not necessarily at the J.K. Rowling level, but at least a decent one who can reach a fair number of people. So here I am writing again in a public domain after many years of hiding behind the privacy of Facebook security settings. Who knows what might happen?

The game is very much alive for my friends and I. Some of the answers stay the same over the years. Maybe it means we haven’t reached our dreams, but I’d like to see it as a not yet thing instead of a never one. And until the day we get there, all we can do is try.

P.S.

In celebration of Manic Mondays, our second month (we'll stop counting next month, we promise), and our dreams, here's our batty illustration of wishful thinking:



(Source: GIFs from Tumblr)