unrealized potential.

while we were driving down to manayunk the other night for a hair appointment, we were listening to a podcast on his ipod from some guy in london who apparently had a fondness for bootlegs and red wine.

he spent several minutes between each song wittering on (his own word, in fact) about something or other which had caught his attention. in particular, the last song in his set sent him off about "the lonliness and ennui of the city." he was talking about the phenomenon of living in a major city, and yet feeling bored, lonely, and alienated.

what was interesting there was that he brought in a newspaper article he had read about the so-called "paralysis of possibility." he presented it as the unexplainable urge for people to not go out, not meet someone new, not see something new (and in a city like london, the article said, you could do something new every night), but to just come home and "sit in their little boxes."

i found it interesting that he stopped there. i'm not sure if he was just drunk or tired, or if it was a case of muddying the water to appear deep, but he just stopped with that essential indictment. i suppose it's also possible that the article stopped there too. but, from what i've read, most analyses of the situation continue, pointing out that the more we give people choice, the more they get afraid and/or overwhelmed. when you could go out and see something new every night, that very possibility overwhelms you with its enormity. it becomes easier and safer to not do anything, than to try to make the decision about what you're going to do and what you're going to miss.

i see it in my own life. it's much easier and safer for me to keep this job that i hate, that i very often describe as "soul-destroyingly boring," than to take that step to find a new job. my current one pays the bills. it's convenient. i can walk to it, which is sort of important when we only have one car. it's too easy to look at any other job and say, "well, it will be just as boring." or "i don't have a car, i can't get to it anyway." or "what if i have to take a major pay cut?" and so i don't use my education, i don't do what i love, because the status quo is easier. and less threatening. it's not that i'm bad at what i do, it's just that it's fairly obvious that my talents lie elsewhere and are essentially being squandered.

i wonder what society would be like if people were given the oppurtunity to use themselves to their fullest potential? no matter how much we talk about it, it's not something we're really interested in. it's much cheaper to pay someone to do something they hate, than to give them a fair salary for something they're good at. if your talent or passion tends towards something society has deemed superfluous or unworthy, then you're equally screwed. but i have to think, what if? what if we really rewarded (for instance) teachers for teaching and artists for art? what would we become?