Privilege and Passion

Passion and privilege do go hand in hand sometimes. The privileged can follow their passion and become what they want because they have the opportunities to do so. Privilege makes things easier and better for certain people and it boosts people's passion. It boosts people's passion by making their life more enjoyable and much more comfortable than others. Romeo, a cast member in the Passion Project movie, said "Society is like not doing its job because it has high expectation for people to follow what other people are doing." Most of us are not as privileged as others in society and therefore, we have to do what others expect us to do. This means we can't do things we are passionate about. I believe this will only make our goals much harder and it will inevitably destroy us. Also in the Passion Project, a member named Karina said education is to teach about respect. “Education is supposed to teach you to respect others and to respect different ideas and how to work with each other.”  Education is a privilege and should be used to help others find their passion. I think education teaching students to be respectful is an example of society doing what they want the students to do. It kind of manipulates the students but at the same time, education can provide insight to a student’s passion.  
 We, the less privileged, look at the privileged in envy. We think that they have everything they could possibly want. This is what the less privileged would look towards instead of what we feel passionate about. It becomes an objective about gathering the most wealth. Emily, a cast member of the Passion Project, stated: "We still have that mindset where we need money to survive. Oh, I have money I can buy a plasma T.V. I can buy a uh a king size, a water bed." This proves that the less privileged wants to get to where the privileged are. We get blinded by what we see and forget our passion. Our dreams to be what we want to become and succumb to what people call "greed and envy" which strays us off our path. The whole point of this is that we are not following what our passion is, instead we are follow what our eyes want and what our families what. There is no real passion if what we are seeking is only a temporary happiness because once it is over, we would have nothing left. In the book, Into the Wild, Chris McCandless found wealth as a bad thing. “Her son, the teenage Tolstoyan, believed that wealth was shameful, corrupting, inherently evil…” (115). I think McCandless doesn’t want wealth to define his passion. He seems to be the type that wants to go out there and live his life to the fullest without the chains of society pulling him down. He was very privileged to have parents that make a lot of money which allowed him to travel around the world with them. This ignited his passion for the great outdoors which is the reason why McCandless decided to have his great Alaska odyssey. 

Link: The Passion Project