Follow Your Heart?

Everybody talks about it. Everyone understands this concept, likes it, even honors and admires it. I’m pretty sure its meaning holds a positively perceived value in society’s eye. Or at least popularly. Society wants us to be productive- a state often requiring that the heart be ignored. But the people in society want to be happy and generally seem to want people to follow their heart, even if they feel too trapped or afraid to do it themselves. But the idea is also fraught/held with derision. I don’t think my father is the only one to scoff and think “idealist” when I grapple candidly with having a job that doesn’t “fulfill” me. These words become so trite and brittle, but I must continue to use them because they are all I have to try- however futile the efforts may be- to communicate this feeling that swells up inside of me. I’ve been ignoring it too long. And I don’t want to sound dramatic. But maybe I’m impatient, which is apparently fitting for my generation, so three years seems devastatingly long. The feeling is rich and intense and compelling and abstract enough to make it hard to articulate, which makes it hard to defend. It’s a longing for something “more”, more satisfying, more meaningful, more rewarding, more good and fun and important. Optimism that life can be extraordinary. Hope that I’m right. Compulsion to try and see. Refusal to give in to apathy, impassivity, ennui, monotony.