More Late Night Philosophizing

This time with BKScope (whose blog has disappeared for some reason...).

B: Nabz what happened to you?

N: I started living alone, and far away, and realized that what I'd been chasing was right in front of me and I'd fled from it, chasing other dreams...And I started reading Iqbal...lol.

N: B, you need to live in NYC for 3 months. You see these people. They don't smile B. It's like they've forgotten how. Their version of happiness - making their money, being 'important'. And then partying. Living in this disgusting city. This sinful city. It tears you apart. And makes you something else: a robot; not yourself. We can't do this to our selves. Our God-given gifts aren't meant to be used for their purposes. I am truly convinced today that I am not meant to follow the path they're following. We need to create our own path. Not follow those that we've seen growing up in the worlds we've grown up in. Our brilliance - intellectual and otherwise - has never come from following the paths of those who have come before us. So why should we spend the rest of our lives doing exactly what we haven't been doing? At UBC, neither of us did what others were doing. And if we did, we did it as BKScope and Nabz. So why change? Why take the path more travelled? Why sit in a skyscraper with thousands of other people? For the money? For the feeling that we have power? For the ability to live in this city? It's all lights. The power goes out and you see what it really is. It's all an illusion, and everyone's trapped.

B: You are right...

N: We're lucky. We come from supportive families. We can afford - in more ways than one - to follow our hearts. So why not? Neither of us needs to make money to survive...so why not be ourselves and do what we love? What's stopping us apart from societal pressure? It'll be hard. Both of us want to change the world. But we'll do it in our own way. See...I don't want to wake up 20 years down the road, and realize that I've wasted the last 20-odd years in doing what someone else wants me to do, and realize that I haven't been truly happy, that I haven't been able to give myself to my husband or my children or my parents or my friends or family

B: ...and people love to construct dreams for others and many happily oblige.

N: I can't sacrifice the people around me for the illusion that I'm 'helping' people somewhere else.

B: hmmm...

N: And as a Marxist friend of mine says - 'helping people' is such a bourgeois concept.

B: Love the Marxists. My father comes from the same line of thought.

N: Lol. Don't waste yourself.

B: It's scary - to not conform. It's scary. Especially when you're told that it is the only way you'll be successful.

N: Remember. You're too important to sit in a skyscraper.