Parents, teachers, coaches, and guidance counselors bombarded me with the same question: "What are you going to do with your life?" I didn't even want to think about that when I was fourteen. My teachers called me a daydreamer. They would write comments on my report card like, "He seems to live in a fantasy world and prefers that to paying serious attention to serious subject matters that will prepare him for life."
The life they were so hell-bent on preparing me for bored the living shit out of me. It seemed way too serious. I saw more meaning in the mysteries of the ocean and the planets than in theology or religion. I was too busy figuring out ways to skip school, go diving, and get laid. My heroes were not presidents, they were pirates. Emerging from adolescence with a healthy "lack of respect for the proper authorities," and a head full of romanticism and hero worship, I was able to come up with an answer.
Q. What are you going to do with your life?
A. Live a pretty interesting one.
-Jimmy Buffett, A Pirate Looks at Fifty
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment