[michaelochurch]

You can either believe you can 'follow your dreams' or believe following dreams is reserved for a select few others.

It's between those two extremes. If I decided my dream was to be a movie star, I'd be out of luck.

He had been working for fun from the beginning.

He did something really smart. He started working (for fun, as you said) before he had to. At 20, it would have been socially acceptable for him to go back to college. Since he was working but didn't have to work, he could achieve a lot. This, combined with the luck of being substantial after a few years of working life, enabled him to "work for fun" for probably most of his work life.

[jwallaceparker]

> If I decided my dream was to be a movie star, I'd be out of luck.

Steve Jobs specifically advised people to do what they love. If your dream were to be a movie star, it would follow that you love to act.

There are myriad opportunities for actors to practice acting. So I don't see how you couldn't follow your dreams, i.e. do what you love.

> He did something really smart. He started working (for fun, as you said) before he had to.

I don't understand how someone's age precludes them from following their dreams.

I'm sensing a defeatist attitude. If you are convinced that it's impossible to follow your own dreams, it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If, instead, you believe that you can follow your dreams, you will look for opportunities to spend your time (even 10 minutes a day at first) following that dream.

Perhaps you can respond with the specifics of your personal dream and how it is not possible to follow it so we can steer this discussion in a productive direction.

[michaelochurch]

I'm not a defeatist. I'm a realist. The "you can be whatever you want to be" bullshit that kids are fed is destructive. It's not true. Not in the least. I'm all for more moderate formulations of that, such as "pay attention to what you want, not what others expect of you" and "value your integrity and creative freedom highly; money and esteem are unimportant in comparison". I can get behind those ideals. I do not think it is responsible to tell young people that when they are adults they will be able to define their role in society and have society say, "OK, sounds good, and here's the money to pay your bills". It don't work that way.

We have a generation of neurotic, emotionally stunted, psychological cripples in this country, and one reason for that is that we've had 40+ years of kids being told they could be whatever they wanted, only to reach bitter disappointment in adulthood upon discovering reality. Which means that normal lives feel like abject failure to them. If they grew up with lower expectations, they might not be so miserable.

Our parents weren't told this shit, because our grandparents grew up in the fucking Great Depression and knew better.

Every time you tell a kid, "You can be whatever you want to be", you're setting him up for despair if he ends up in an average job and social position. You're better off telling him that life is hard and full of compromises and that most of whether he succeeds or not is out of his control, so he should focus on the 1% he can actually control. I am all for inspiring people to do work they love instead of the work that is best-paid or most esteemed, but they need to be prepared for sacrifice.

I don't understand how someone's age precludes them from following their dreams.

Like it or not-- and I'm definitely in the "not" camp because I think it's disgusting-- in the work world people are judged on where they got to at what age. That's why this "follow your dreams" bullshit is so pernicious. It leads to people (after chasing rainbows for several years) working entry-level jobs at 30, which means they are very unlikely to be taken seriously ever-- they're too far behind.