"Well, I know it's not fashionable, to be...this hopeful"

[spelunkingplato]

Comments

[writewrongs]

I believe there's a balance between care-free and passionate. You can't be passionate about everything because you have to be able to risk one thing for another. If you risk nothing you gain nothing, and if there's nothing in this world you care enough (more than most other things) to risk yourself on then I start to wonder why. It could just be me, but I find I silently admire people who have never had to cling on to something for their bare lives because they're not really worried. But it seems you *are* worried, because you wouldn't risk anything? Or because you haven't? Or because, put in a serious situation, you couldn't

[nostalgebraist]

I love the bit about being "carefree." It reminds me of my aunt and uncle on my mother's side. They worked as psychologists for a while, and they were paid well enough that they could eventually quit. Now they spend all their time trying out fancy restaurants and traveling. At one point they asked my parents why they hadn't quit their jobs, as they could get by without them--and my parents said that, well, they actually got something out of their jobs.

My aunt and uncle are completely carefree and, although they're happy, I don't think I would be in their situation. To cut off engagement with the world and resign yourself to consumption seems so depressing. Even outside of ethical imperatives to be engaged--helping other people, and so forth--I don't even think individual people, on their own self-interested terms, were meant to live without cares. Having some sort of "endeavour," some great challenge in life at which you could imaginably fail, makes both material comforts and other people seem so much more valuable, and ...