“Always remember to follow your dreams and your passions,” asserts almost every graduation speech ever. It’s a cliché statement at this point, regurgitated by so many thought pieces and Substack essays and inspiration Instagram Reels that the phrase itself has become a mantra we repeat mindlessly. Just follow your passions and everything will turn out alright, right?
Despite people’s love for the saying, pursuing your passions may have lost its luster. For many, following your dreams now seems like something that invites problems and setbacks. In elementary school, fifth-grade yearbooks would be filled with what students’ dream jobs were, and they were widespread as they were, perhaps, fantastical. We wanted to become NBA players and ballerinas and pop stars and presidents.
However, some of that confidence and hope has been lost. We think about what lines of work will bring us happiness and satisfaction, but oftentimes, our minds fill with insecurities: “Oh, but artists don’t make enough money, I’m not good enough at music to go professional, chemistry is too hard for me to ever think about becoming a doctor,” and so on. Now, following your fifth-grade career dreams seems to be more delusional than dreamy.
As we’ve gotten older, these self-doubts mix with pressure to follow a path that seems to be a more sure-fire route to security, and, for some of us, what we really enjoy may feel too difficult and too far-fetched to actually turn into reality.
What many of us have forgotten is that pursuing passion was never supposed to be an easy endeavor in the first place. It’s packed with ups and downs, roadblocks and successes. But, as this issue of The Harbinger shows, just because something is hard does not mean it is not worth doing.
Consider the class of teachers that are retiring this year. In total, they have spent over 140 years contributing to this community and generations of students learning. Many of them were drawn to education as a higher calling, as something that would offer them greater fulfillment in life. That doesn’t mean their decades of teaching were easy and fun all day, everyday. On the contrary, many days were filled with hardships. Still, they stayed committed to their passion year after year, armed with the knowledge that, despite the challenges of educating teenagers, the rewards are so much greater.
That ethos should inspire us. Algonquin is undoubtedly filled with people who are unbelievably talented. This issue’s profiles of junior Nick Simoneau (who constructs his own instruments) and sophomore Natalia Souza (who sings regularly at festivals and restaurants) and postgrad Catie Campbell (who is working to advocate for disabled people on a national stage) prove just that. We cannot shrink away from going down the path we want just because it may be difficult or stressful or different from what many others may do.
So spend some time this summer doing activities that bring you joy, and find a way to keep that passion alive when we reconnect in the fall. We only live one life. It’s up to us to make it worthwhile.
This unsigned editorial reflects the views of the Harbinger’s Editorial Board.
