Monotony

Why is it that we live in an age of near-limitless technology, an age where the impossible has become routine, and yet so many of us are still trapped in the monotony of jobs we never dreamed of? We can send satellites across the solar system, map the human genome, and simulate entire worlds inside machines—but still, most of us take whatever work we can find, not the work that speaks to our souls.

I think about this every day. I wanted to be an anthropologist—out on dig sites, brushing sand from the bones of the past, standing in the ruins of lost civilizations, piecing together the stories of people who lived and died long before me. I wanted to study cultures around the world, to see how different ways of living could reflect the full range of human possibility. In school, I studied the intricacies of kinship, rituals, belief systems, migration, identity—anthropology taught me to see humanity as a tapestry, woven from countless threads of meaning and tradition.

And forensic psychology—my other pursuit—felt no less alive. There I dove into the ways the human mind could fracture, the influences of environment, trauma, and biology. I studied how psychology intersects with law, how testimony, interrogation, and judgment are never as simple as they appear. I learned to see how the brain carries shadows, how memory bends, how justice is both a science and an art. These were subjects that lit something in me, that made me feel awake and purposeful.

But now, here I am—working in an elementary school, helping children trace out their ABCs and count to ten. It’s honest work, important work, I know. Children are the future, and guiding them is no small task. Yet compared to what I dreamed of, compared to the fire I felt in my studies, it feels unbearably monotonous. I can’t shake the thought that the system we live in takes people with passions, with knowledge, with aspirations, and funnels them into whatever jobs they can scrape together—because survival won’t wait for the right opportunity.

The irony is brutal: with all our technology, all our progress, we could create a society where people actually pursue their true callings, where labor is shared, and no one is forced into roles that drain them. But instead, we run on old systems, old structures, old ideas of “work” that leave so many dreams collecting dust.

Maybe I’m lucky to have a job at all. Maybe I should be grateful. And I am, in a way. But gratitude doesn’t erase longing. Gratitude doesn’t silence the question: why bother to dream, if the world only hands you whatever scraps it can spare?

Still, I can’t help dreaming. Of being in the field, of being immersed in cultures, of holding the bones of history in my hands. For now, though, I will teach children their letters, and pretend that someday, the world might allow me to return to the passions that once made me feel alive.