Continued from Building your career vs. doing your dream (pt. 1):

Stop for a second and look at the big picture. What you really want to do is not to build a career so much as you want to build a life. To do that, you've got to chase your dreams. Yet 90% of people don't do their dream.

I found the following anonymous piece on the internet:

"Imagine lying on your deathbed at age 80, and looking back on a life spent behind a desk, pushing paper, managing someone else's ‘business processes.' Imagine looking back on a youth filled with limitless possibilities; on a time when no effort or responsibility was too great to keep you from shrugging off convention and finding something unique to look back on. Imagine having traded all that in for years of security and routine."

Dreams require commitment and hedging kills dreams. The trouble is that the best stuff you ever do in life will probably be chalk-full of risk. The best stories are the ones where people showed courage in the face of risk.

While we've been created for a life of challenge and adventure, we crave the coziness of electric blankets. We cling to what we find safe and predictable. God made us to be mountain climbers and bungee jumpers, to take our deep-keeled boats onto the high seas. But many of us would rather live behind a desk, supporting a mortgage, two kids, and a reputation for "niceness;" living in the safety of a shallow harbor.

To let go of your moorings and the expectations of parents and others concerning a career requires that you explore risky possibilities. It seems reckless in that it embraces risk over security. But when talking about taking a risk, the biggest risk is not pursuing your dream.

The corporate life and the careers that it produces want to harness you to a set of policies and procedures that can slowly choke the life out of you. The soul refuses to be harnessed; it longs for passion, for freedom.