4 ms·
Of course, one could have been T.S. Eliot, with a reasonable case to be made that you were the greatest poet of the 20th century, and find yourself working in a
by msabalau 13y ago
Of course, one could have been T.S. Eliot, with a reasonable case to be made that you were the greatest poet of the 20th century, and find yourself working in a sub-basement of a bank for eight years to support yourself while pursuing your true vocation.
"So one must find out
how to become happy oneself.
Wanting to transform the world
without discovering one's true self
is like trying to cover the whole world with leather
to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns.
It is much simpler to wear shoes."
- Ramana Maharshi
- michaelochurch 13y agoYou make a strong point. Yet there's one crucial difference. In Eliot's time, people didn't have access to a full time series of your professional social status. I'm sure that it sucked for him to work in a bank basement for 8 years, but he never worried that someone would find that out on LinkedIn and he'd be in the basement permanently. There was a time in which it was much more OK to do low-level work, if only because you could pull a Don Draper and reinvent yourself with a different history.