Day 10 -- Drawing inspiration from Batman

Last night I watched “Batman Begins” for the first time. I know the movie is amazing and came out quite some time ago, so yes along with being the last person on earth to get both an IPOD and a cell phone, I am in fact the last person on earth to watch this movie. Pretty sure there are tribal villages with no electricity or running waters whose members have already seen “Batman Begins.” At least I don’t have much of a wait for the sequel, right?

But much about the movie spoke to me in this season of unemployment (more to come on fighting injustice, becoming a ninja warrior/jet set billionaire, spelunking and constructing an alter ego); but for the time being, I’ll focus on this line:

“It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.”

Right, you remember this is the line Rachel Dawes says to Bruce Wayne that he in turn says back to her as Batman revealing his true identity in the midst of saving Gotham.

Also a very similar quote I recently came across from The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day:

“I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions.”

I certainly want to do something that matters. I don’t want to work in an office, be a paper pusher, take out the trash, wash dishes, sell anything, crunch numbers or, to say it succinctly live an ordinary life. I want to do something where at the end of the day, my bank account might not be full, but I will be proud and passionate about my vocation. I don’t want to be the guy from “About Schmidt” who at the end of his career finds the lump total of it amounting to a bunch of pathetic boxes that wind up in the dumpster. Are these types of jobs posted on Idealist.com? I am not so sure.