I just watched Revolutionary Road (2008), starring Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet and directed by Sam Mendes. A great movie about the dilemma between following your heart and obeying conventional wisdom, the inevitable conflict between certainty and happiness, the fear of the unknown and unfamiliar, the confusion budding from not knowing whether one is running away from something or running towards something when one has made a life-altering decision, and the painful feeling of doubt one gets when one has made a committed decision to live life without following stupid societal norms, only to be discouraged, laughed at, and generally not be understood or supported by surrounding people who don't know any better. Anyone who has even had the thought to live a life significantly more different than others would be able to truly identify with this movie.
When I watched the movie, a lot of the scenes reminded me of my own experiences, particularly those occurring when and after I decided to basically disappear from school in the middle of this year and do something different for once. I was tired -- not tired of studying (God knows that that's one thing that I invariably excel in, at least in terms of my results/effort ratio) -- but tired of living a life that was arranged by others for me to live out in subtle yet palpably-soul-consuming ways. Given freedom or security, I will always choose freedom. Always. But not many people would choose freedom and act like they mean it. It takes a certain type of courage and toughness to thrive in the conditions of extreme uncertainty that unavoidably result from forgoing security. Those who choose security over freedom -- that is, 99% of people -- will never understand how the other camp can even choose freedom over security. The former probably thinks of the latter as insane.
When I left school to run my business full-time (which is growing healthily and paying me, the sole employee, a respectable salary -- thank you for asking), I don't remember anyone staunchly supporting what I did. There were friends who understood what I did, certainly, but a distinct distance started building up between me and the vast majority of people I know. Some sympathised with me, as if I was in some sort of pitiable predicament. Some were perplexed and had nothing to say and basically signaled that they felt like they didn't know me anymore. But many more were less nice than before, as if me living the life I wanted betrayed them or showed that I was better or smarter.
I can assure anyone that what I did was inner-directed. I have never felt happier than before: making bucks, doing basically whatever the hell I want without some killjoy asshole spoiling the fun (as is very common in Singapore, the land where humourless fuckers are in charge), and ultimately building a career and my dream way of living right now instead of incurring immense opportunity costs by learning something I don't give a rat's ass about. Nothing tastes better than freedom. Definitely not money. I'm amazed that anyone can believe that money can bring freedom (quite the opposite, in fact).
Also, a lot of people treat entrepreneurs who work from home as some sort of underpaid, non-serious bums who will never amount to anything. Really? How did these people arrive at said condescending conclusion? When they were chained to a cubicle 40 hours a week doing meaningless work that numbs them so much that their only favourite day in life is pay day (exactly like guppies waiting for feeding time), or when they were forcibly pulled out of bed every morning at some arbitrary time, made to wear a noose around their neck and an uncomfortable well-pressed shirt to impress some overpaid asshole, and put through hours of torturous commuting, or when they were hanging around with their similarly grey, soulless cubicle compatriots in an trendy uptown bar, high-fiving each other and discussing about how much they have conquered life because they are well-paid, wear Prada, and go to work in some fancy office building that invariably makes its inhabitants irreversibly conceited and unduly complacent?
Please. You are an employee. That in itself is a serious form of failure. Employees don't know anything, PERIOD. They have no idea about how things work in the real world, and their skill sets are always helplessly limited. In the same way that people in the private sector look down on people in the public sector for having the freedom to behave inefficiently and being well-protected, entrepreneurs look down on employees for being mere tools with a bloated sense of entitlement. Most employees are overpaid anyway, for the type of work that they deliver.
Well, I'm tired of talking. I'll now go back to live the life that I want; like I always have, like I always will.
