1ºYou're doing a masterful job of inserting your own thoughts into what others are saying. Let me tell you my story and how getting more 'time' to pursue my heart changed my life. I worked an average of 65 hours a week for 7 years in a factory. That's the average, not the max. I worked my way up to Supervisor of the biggest and most profitable department, our flagship. Covid gave me heart disease and a heart condition. That company fired me with a letter, not even a phone call. With my free time I started doing things I was passionate about, while I recovered. I now have a YouTube channel with 20 thousand subscribers where I teach coding to kids. I also run a fitness program and newsletter where I sell items and clothing that I design. I've published two books and am working on two more. I'm also designing a tabletop game that's in the testing stages.
None of that would've happened had I continued working 65 hours a week in a factory.
2ºWell... here's my basement - https://www.ajawamnet.com. Been doing this for 40 years. Designed over 3,000 products including one of the first Internet of Things systems in 1995 (story and patent here: https://www.ajawamnet.com/amnet/index.html ) and 3D printing back then. I'll work until they pull the solder iron from cold, dead fingers.
I guess I'll be OK. Always told my kids to be involved in their lives. Wanna be PhD (my son is)? Sure. Wanna be a landscaper? Sure.
If a kid is not digging the typical academic setting, we label them as ADHD and give them drugs to sit still.
Ya know - why not put them on a farm or some skilled labor thing that they may like to do? For instance agriculture is kinda important - people need to be fed. Teach them agricultural science.
I always love the "celebrate our differences" out of one side of the mouth and then "BUT YOU MUST CONFORM!!" out the other.
Like pick one...
Cultivate their fascination. Not because of some monetary or status reason.
Our system of values is so skewed.
Example - what contributed the most to the longevity of human's lifespan?
Medicine? - Nope
Pharmaceuticals? Naw...
TOILETS!! CLEAN WATER!!
So does that mean that Ed Norton (sewer worker on the Honeymooners way back when) is more important than Dr. Sanjay Gupta?
No - but probably just as important.
Always told my kids - "ya ain't got enough garbage men, ya ain't gonna have enough doctors...."
So my son - a PhD candidate in Soc Anthro/Sociology recently mentioned that Dr. Martin Luther King stated something similar:
“You are doing many things here in this struggle. You are demanding that this city will respect the dignity of labor. So often we overlook the work and the significance of those who are not in professional jobs, of those who are not in the so-called big jobs. But let me say to you tonight, that whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity, and it has worth. One day our society must come to see this. One day our society will come to respect the sanitation worker if it is to survive, for the person who picks up our garbage, in the final analysis, is as significant as the physician, for if he doesn’t do his job, diseases are rampant. All labor has dignity."