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So You Want to Do Something ‘Meaningful’ With Your Life?
Read this if you’re struggling to figure out the point of it all
It’s my sophomore year of college, and I’m lying on my extra-long twin bed, talking to my mother on my hot pink Hello Kitty cordless phone. I’m telling her about my classes, and wondering aloud if it’s time for me to declare a major. Marketing, maybe?
I stop and think for a moment. “I don’t know,” I say. “It’s just kind of meaningless, you know?”
My mom laughed. She and my dad had spent their professional lives in the advertising industry. I spent my childhood begging to tag along to their offices, where there were neon signs and free pop and lots of weirdos saying swear words and putting their ideas up on walls. I was always thrilled when I saw that work out in the world.
But, you know, it wasn’t like advertising was as meaningful as something like teaching, or social work, or medicine, or-or-or…
I can’t remember when my dad chimed in — maybe he was listening to the conversation from my mom’s phone, or maybe she recounted it to him later. But I remember his response to my comment.
“I didn’t realize that providing for my family was meaningless,” he said. “I didn’t realize that sending you to college was meaningless…
