The Night Mare Awakes Every Day
My Career Path is on Track
Setting: A quiet, sun-dappled garden. Marble benches sit among ancient olive trees. SOPHIA, the personification of wisdom, is seated on one of them. GEORGE, a playwright with a sharp, inquisitive mind, paces slowly before her.
Sophia: You are restless, George. Your mind is tracing patterns on the garden path, but your spirit is elsewhere. Tell me what troubles you.
George: It’s this notion of a career, Sophia. Of a life’s work. I’m told mine has been a success, that my path is well-established. Yet, I feel perpetually divided. It’s as if two different men are vying for control of my soul.
Sophia: Describe them to me.
George: One of them is a relentless examiner. He sees the world precisely as it is—its injustices, its absurdities, its structures—and he cannot help but dissect it all. He relentlessly asks why things are arranged in such a flawed and illogical manner. He finds his purpose in analysis and critique.
Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.
— George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Sophia: A valuable man. The world needs those who are brave enough to look at reality without flinching. And the other?
George: (A faint smile touches his lips) The other is a dreamer. He pays little attention to the world as it is. He’s preoccupied with visions of what is not yet real—new societies, different ways of being, ideas that have no precedent. He doesn’t ask why things are the way they are; he challenges the void, asking why these better worlds shouldn't exist. This man finds his purpose in creation.
Sophia: And you believe these two men are at war within you?
George: Constantly. The examiner scoffs at the dreamer’s naivety. The dreamer is frustrated by the examiner’s cynicism. I feel that to be truly on track in my career, I must choose which man to be. But I cannot.
Sophia: You see a dichotomy where there is a dynamic partnership. Consider the builder of a great bridge. Does she not first need to understand the river as it is? She must study its currents, the strength of the bedrock, the laws of physics that govern her materials. She must ask ‘why’ the river behaves this way. That is your examiner.
George: I suppose so. She must ground her work in reality.
Sophia: Precisely. But if that is all she did, she would only ever be a student of the river. To build the bridge, she must also look at the empty space above the water and envision a structure that has never stood there before. She must imagine a new reality and ask, ‘Why not span this chasm?’ That is your dreamer.
(George stops pacing, his expression shifting from conflict to contemplation.)
George: So, one cannot function without the other. The vision is useless without an understanding of the real, and an understanding of the real is stagnant without a vision for what could be.
Sophia: Yes. The track of a meaningful career is not a single, narrow rail that you must follow. It is the wide, fertile ground between what is and what could be. The tension you feel between your two natures is not a sign that you are lost. It is the very engine of your progress. It is the proof that your career path is perfectly on track.
George: (Nodding slowly, a sense of peace dawning on his face) So, the feeling of being pulled in two directions is simply the force of creation itself. To question the world is to lay the foundation. To dream of another is to build upon it.
Sophia: And that, George, is how a life’s work leaves its mark. Not by choosing one path, but by gracefully walking the line between them.
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