Financial sirens

Popular bloggers claim that in a world filled with increasing uncertainty, you shouldn’t chase your dreams. Among other things, they suggest being more practical and earning capital first. To do this, of course, you need to follow their channel. The advice is to live in the here and now, be highly productive, and set your dream aside for a while. It’s a very practical piece of advice, except for one “but”: our time and energy are not limitless. Mastering even one craft fully can take 5–6 years or even a lifetime. And what if the dream is blown away with the first gust of wind in the form of real action toward it, while the years have already passed?

Let me tell you the story of Tom Mueller, the son of a lumberjack. Against his parents’ wishes, he moved to Los Angeles to follow his inner calling—to become a rocket engineer. After gaining considerable experience at a boring corporation that supplied parts, Tom never gave up on pursuing something bigger. He built rocket miniatures and tested theories literally in his garage, along with other dreamers of great achievements.

At that time, Elon Musk was developing the idea of founding SpaceX, and by chance, he met Tom. He asked him just one question: “Can you build something bigger?” And so, in 2002, Tom became one of the founders of SpaceX. Would he have achieved this had he first created his own advertising business?

Whatever stage of life you are at, you need to remember that your true identity is more likely shaped through acts of self-assertion and self-discovery in the context of a continuous search for meaning and struggle. This phenomenological process of searching is not a simple path of the samurai, a process often perceived as going against the flow.

P.S. I don’t have all the answers, but I believe entrusting your fate and happiness to the hands of financial sirens is not the path that will help you find yourself or meet the people who are truly right for you.