in need of someone to crush my pipe dreams of academia once and for all

hi all,

i've dreamed of becoming a professor since the beginning of my high school career. i truly enjoy teaching other people. i have a serious passion for philosophy (in particular analytical philosophy and phenomenology). i'm so enamored with the subject that it honestly crushes me that i'll probably have to let go any sort of formal study of it after undergrad.

i'm currently at a crossroads in my life where i can either choose a university that will ultimately set me up for a more dependable career (law) or cambridge philosophy, which will likely be more beneficial if i'm at all considering academia as an option.

i believe that my hopes of becoming an academic are causing me a lot of undue stress and rumination about my future. when i ask professors about it, i'll either get the "yeah, so it's an absolute meat grinder, don't do it" or a more hopeful response. i am the kind of person who will continue to consider a possibility and continue to ruminate over it (no matter how slim that possibility may be). in other words, it's very hard for me to just "let it go". i don't want to go through the effort to leave a door cracked open for the slim possibility i'd be able to go through that door someday, just to find that when i do, there are actually lions on the other side who are there to maul me and throw me back out. i'd honestly just like to get ahead of myself and quit where i'm at to simplify things. there's no need for me to worry this much if it's not even really feasible. i just need a final answer.

i know this question has been asked here in many ways before; apologies for the redundancy, looking for as much information as i can get before i make my decisions