Some people are incredibly talented. Some people are incredibly lucky. Some people succeed through hard work. Some people try, fail and move on. And then there are others, they try, fail, try again and fail again and keep trying long after any reasonable person would have quit. These people are called morons. Vincent Dooly is a moron.
My sister's favorite saying is, "Shoot for the Moon, even if you miss, you'll land among the stars." This saying could not possibly be more inaccurate. The Moon is 0.0000000427 light-years from Earth. Proxima Centauri is 4.24 light-years away. That's 100,000,000 times farther away. Even, Sol is 0.0000159 light-years away. That's almost 400 times the distance. There is no way a vessel bound for the Moon would be carrying enough fuel and supplies to accidentally make it to any star. Furthermore, any space mission as poorly planned enough that missing a planetoid entirely is a distinct possibility is far more likely to explode on the launchpad than make it out of the atmosphere. A more accurate expression would be, "Shoot for the Moon, if you miss, you will die."
At this point, you may be wondering if this piece is satirical. It is not. I am being completely straightforward. Not everyone gets to live their dreams. Sorry, it's the truth. As one of the lucky, one's I can tell you it's pretty sweet, but if you don't share my good fortune, your much better off accepting that you won't be the next American Idol and getting on with something else you are good at.
The Mother of Invention is a portrait of a man that should have quit. Vincent Dooly can't make a working invention. For example, one of his self-defense inventions, the Knife-helmet, is actually less useful for self-defense than the knife-no-helmet. (Ok, so someone who looks like Vincent shows up in the history book at the end. That doesn't mean it's actually him. And, even if he did make a working time machine, he is now trapped in the past with no way back, no money, none of the necessary survival skills to survive in another time and no one will ever know that the time machine worked.) He doesn't know what consumers want. If you can't figure out what people need, you can't fill that need. He's fixated on a girl who is way out of his league and it's making him miserable. Each failure leads inevitably to misery and back to another failure and ultimately his death. This is what happens to a man who cannot recognize his own limitations.
Vincent Dooly is a man who would be very happy as a cable repairman or a plumber or a mechanic. He would be great at a job that requires a desire to fix things and understand how they work, but that doesn't depend on an abundance of creativity. Yes, Vincent has a plethora of imagination, but imagination is not the same as creativity. Imagination is the ability to picture something novel. Creativity is the ability to actually make it happen. Vincent's transporter is an example of this difference. He sticks various bits and bobs together and imagines that it's a transporter, but what he actually created was a bunch of bits and bobs stuck together. Imagination writes the script, creativity makes the movie.
We live in an America where far to many people go to college and try to make it rich. Then, they wind up unemployed or shuffled into some desk job that they resent for the rest of their working lives. Meanwhile, there is a dearth of anyone willing to actually get their hands dirty. How many of those miserable account specialists out there would be much happier as construction workers? Sometimes when you shoot for the Moon, you wind up trapped in the perpetual blackness of the interplanetary void while you slowly starve to death.
Now, I'm not asking everyone to give up on their dreams. If you play guitar like Eddie Van Halen, you should be playing guitar. But well, you don't. You're not Roy Hobbs, nor are you Gordon Gekko. Despite what your kindergarten teacher told you, not everyone is special. If you call everyone special, you divorce the word from its meaning and divorce can be very painful on kids. Realism can be tough to deal with in the short-term, but lying causes long-term harm. If you know someone toiling under the torment of an unrealistic dream, it's time to tell them they suck. Hey, send them this post, I'll do it.
Dear [your name here],
Your [friend/family member/enemy/casual acquaintance/romantic partner] wants you to know something very important for you to hear and it's not easy for them to say. That thing you've been devoting your life to, no not that that thing, the other that thing, you just aren't very good at it, you're not getting any better and you never will. It's time to quit. You can keep doing it as a hobby, but no one will ever pay you to do it professionally. I hear there are openings at the local [factory/vocational school/pet store]. You'll like it there.
Sincerely,
A Concerned Jerk
Many people say "Do what you love." My advice is different. "Do what you're good at, chances are you'll love it."
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