Soulmates and Empty Pockets
They say to love someone is to know them and accept them, faults and all. I have always wondered about how “love at first sight” works… Can you see a person for the first time and just know that from the moment you took your first breath, every other breath and every step you took, was leading you towards this person, and every step after that would be together?….
I might have met one once, was at an artsy function, someone was announcing their vows to poetry, punctuated by finger snaps and knowing nods. And that’s when I saw her.
By the time I gathered the courage to speak to her, she asked,
“What took you so long?”
I thought she meant the half-night I’d spent watching her from across the room.
In my defence, she had been performing… and afterwards, she was surrounded by admirers.
As I stumbled through an explanation, she clarified that she had been waiting for me her whole life. And a gentleman, she said, must never keep a lady waiting.
To make up for it, I had to catch her up on everything I’d been doing instead of finding her. She teased that I must be terrible at asking for directions… otherwise, I would have found her sooner.
Ever had a surreal conversation where everything is multiple-layered, effortlessly picking up the subtext and matching it bar for bar… I mean she was a poet and I, I, I… lets just say I dabble.
I spent the evening like an accessory on her arm and she introduced me as her soulmate…
It was beautiful evening and I was crushed when it ended, and she said “it’s a pity we cant ever see each other again”
Why?
“Well,” she shrugged, “if we ended up together, we would starve. Two creatives together? That’s a tragic tale that romanticises poverty.” She smiled poetically and sighed “I want the soft life.”
And that was that…
Its no secret that picking a creative enterprise will usually have people trying to talk you out of it, with threats and promises, forwarding you vacancies for positions you might be interested in… which is weird because one day should you become a breakout star, they will be the first to say how they supported you from day one…
We love the romance of purpose.
“Do what you love,” they say.
“Follow your passion,” they insist.
But passion… doesn’t always pay. It tends to struggle to pay the bills and put food on the table.
Sometimes its like we are stuck with a choice between paycheck and passion, where choosing passion might cost you comfort while choosing a paycheck might cost you yourself…
But maybe that’s the real trap, the idea that you must choose. Maybe the answer isn’t one or the other… but a quiet compromise where choosing a paycheque doesn’t mean you’ve abandoned your passion. And choosing passion doesn’t mean you must suffer for it…
Some choices feel like soulmates, that cant be together, perhaps in another life.
~B
WinterABC26 Passion vs Paycheque
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