Does Practicality Prevent You From Living the Dream?

Practical people are obsessed with making life easier. Easier to finance, easier to maintain, easier to schedule, easier to park, easier to explain to Human Resources. They do not necessarily build the life they want; they build the life least likely to generate an uncomfortable conversation with their branch manager.

Take the practical man’s stroller. Cupholders are a must. It needs storage, snack trays, washable fabric, and the ability to fold into a VW without disturbing the emergency Costco paper towels. It looks like a janitorial cart with a baby strapped to it, but that is fine because the practical man does not care how something makes him feel. He cares whether Consumer Reports gave it an 8.7.

I understand. My stroller may be heavier, more expensive, and nearly impossible to collapse without swearing in front of my children. But it looks magnificent. The practical man sees an inconvenience. I see the price of refusing to push my children around in something that resembles an airport wheelchair.

Then there is the practical house: one story, low ceilings, sensible square footage, inexpensive air-conditioning, and absolutely no architectural feature that could ever be described as grand. The practical man loves it because stairs are inefficient. Apparently, walking twelve steps to reach your bedroom is now a financial crisis.

He does not want a sweeping staircase, a balcony, a dramatic foyer, or rooms large enough to create memories in. Those things cost money to heat. He wants a home that can be maintained cheaply, cooled efficiently, and sold quickly when his employer transfers him to the regional compliance office in Des Moines.

I want the stairs. I want the tall ceilings. I want a home with enough presence that my children remember growing up there. Does it cost more to cool? Yes. So does every worthwhile ambition.

Practical people also believe two children is the responsible limit. Two fit into a regular car. Two fit into one hotel room. Two can participate in soccer without turning the family calendar into an air-traffic-control screen. A third child is “a lot.” A fourth means you have lost your mind.

They can calculate the cost of another child through college, but they cannot calculate the value of another person sitting at the Thanksgiving table thirty years from now. They are very good at forecasting expenses and surprisingly bad at imagining abundance.

The practical man asks, “How many children can I comfortably afford without changing my lifestyle?” A builder asks, “What kind of family do I want to create?” One designs his family around convenience. The other expands his life to accommodate the family.

And then there is the practical man’s career.

He works at the bank.

Of course he does.

He wears a quarter-zip with the company logo, receives fifteen paid vacation days, and has a dependable paycheck that appears every other Friday. His dental plan is excellent. His dreams are still pending manager approval.

He has always wanted to start something. A restaurant. A clothing brand. A consulting business. An app. He has been “working on the idea” for eight years, which means he occasionally discusses it after two beers while someone else pays the tab.

He cannot leave the bank, of course. The timing is not right. Interest rates are high. The kids are young. The market is uncertain. His bonus vests in March. Once March arrives, he needs to wait until after summer. After summer, it would be foolish to leave before the year-end bonus. There is always one more practical reason to remain exactly where he is.

Meanwhile, I built Rupiani’s.

I did not ask a district manager whether deep-dish pizza had adequate market validation. I did not wait until the supply chain was convenient, the economy was perfect, or everyone around me agreed it was sensible. I found the recipe, built the brand, dealt with production problems, spent the money, took the criticism, survived the delays, and created something that did not exist before.

Was it practical? Absolutely not.

Building anything is impractical in the beginning. There are easier ways to earn a paycheck than manufacturing a two-pound Chicago deep-dish pizza, freezing it, packaging it, shipping it across the country, and persuading strangers to pay premium money for it.

The practical man sees all those complications and says, “That sounds stressful.”

Correct.

That is why he did not build it.

He thinks the difference between us is risk tolerance. It is not. The difference is that I was willing to look stupid temporarily in exchange for the chance to build something permanent. He prefers to look responsible permanently while privately wondering what might have happened if he had ever developed the balls to begin.

The practical man calls entrepreneurship reckless because that sounds better than admitting he is scared. He tells himself that most businesses fail while working inside a business somebody else had the courage to start.

Then, at lunchtime, he buys a product from a founder, drives a car built by founders, uses technology created by founders, eats at a restaurant opened by a founder, and returns to the bank to explain why starting a business is too risky.

His entire life is financed by other people’s impractical decisions.

Practical people also love saying that cheaper things “work just as well.” The basic stroller works just as well. The ranch house works just as well. The supermarket pizza works just as well. The disposable lighter works just as well. The economy hotel room works just as well because “we are only sleeping there.”

Yes, and a prison cot also technically provides a place to sleep.

Reducing everything to function is how practical people justify living without beauty, ambition, or taste. A home becomes shelter. Food becomes calories. Work becomes income. A car becomes transportation. Life becomes a series of efficiently completed errands followed by retirement.

The founder wants more.

He accepts that the better house costs more, the larger family requires more, the company may fail, the beautiful object may be unnecessary, and the deep-dish pizza may destroy the remainder of the afternoon. He is not trying to make life easy to maintain. He is trying to make it worth remembering.

Practical people avoid burdens. Builders choose their burdens deliberately. Businesses are burdens. Children are burdens. Homes are burdens. Ambition is a burden. Anything meaningful eventually becomes heavy.

Deep dish is heavy too.

That is why we like it.

So enjoy your one-story house, your two approved children, your cupholder-equipped stroller, and your reliable position at the bank. Keep polishing the business plan you will launch once conditions are perfect. Keep collecting the paycheck created by somebody with more courage than you.

The rest of us have things to build.

And Chicago's finest deep dish pizza to eat, shipped straight to your door.