Friday, October 01, 2010

Dreamsnuffer

Here’s something of an ethical dilemma...

Let’s say you’ve been working on a project for eight years. You have your share of stunning successes, but you also run into a slew of massive disappointments that rip your heart right out of your chest for months on end. You get to the top of the mountain once or twice, but you also experience a handful of runs of complete futility that make you question why you’re doing what you’re doing and why you ever bothered getting involved.

Still, you persevere. For eight long years. You bust your ass, you do your best, and it doesn’t cross your mind, even for one second, that what you’re doing isn’t good for the world.

Until, that is, you realize it’s all a load of shit, and that the people pulling the strings – of which you’re not one – don’t want you to succeed, never wanted you to succeed, and are doing everything in their power to keep you from succeeding.

So, let’s say you step back from your project for a little which, and you see it for what it was and still is: a big, fat fucking farce that was rigged from the get-go.

And let’s say you wash your hands of the situation and walk away clean and promise yourself you won’t look back.

Let’s say all of this happens.

But then, a year later, a guy gives you a call. A guy in the same position you were in eight years ago – an idealist who’s seen the work you’ve done and wants to do the same thing. And he wants your advice. He wants to know whether he’s wasting his time. He wants to know what you have to say.

Do you tell him?