What constitutes a dream job exactly? I knew a girl who wanted to sing from the time she had lungs. I’ve heard about another guy, sort of an anonymous hero of mine, who lives out of his van in Bar Harbor, Maine and fixes motorcycles for money. They both had the pipes to succeed and are well contented, but what about the rest of us? Where is the Promised Land for the weeping majority? How was your Monday this week?
There are some who contend that the American dream has changed and that youngsters these days are too particular, and too picky around a safe paycheck, with its promise of basic cable, bread and milk. They may have a point. Still, given the sweeping cultural changes that birthed the sentiment to begin with, and the related evolution of the American labor market, is it really necessary to settle for a position that doesn’t engage you? This is not a rhetorical question – I’m opening the forum.
I know some very smart and hardworking people that have received their degrees in that past few years. Many of those people are doing well financially, particularly those who entered the business world or trained in the sciences, but without exception, every one of them is simultaneously bored, stressed-out and reeking of dispassion. The tasks that take up the majority of their wakeful life depress them, so they must console themselves with TIVO.
Before I continue, let me preface but stating that this is not a rant against modern capitalism. I studied economics and thus have a predictable, even fetish-like respect for the cold efficiency of the market. Still, it is inevitable to be concerned about the “worst system except for all others.” Not even a magic kaleidoscope could make the beginnings of these young women and men’s careers look like a success story. They’re not on the path…they’ve missed the mountain altogether, and now an ugly momentum is carrying them away from it. Employers, after all, do not like to see prospects that jump from position to position.
Is this a symptom of de-skilling, the lengthening shadow of a Marxian nightmare? Does work just have to be no fun? Are their only seventeen jobs that are fun and a waiting list for them longer than a Saturday night line at the Avalon?
Before taking the plunge into whatever was available, many of the graduates I referred to shared some great ideas with me, things that they care a lot about and that, youthful idealism aside, actually sound marketable. These were all precluded and abandoned by the hurdle of start-up capital. Generally, they couldn’t even afford the rent within ICBM range of a metropolitan area or the car payment to cruise around outside of one. Perhaps a Herculean and hyperopic vision could have overcome provisional difficulties like these but, on the level of social organization, it seems a poor way to engineer our working lives, and our lives in general (We’re built for naps people – you’re drifting off just reading this!)
Which is it? Are we searching for work within an institutional framework that disfavors us or has the great American can-do military-industrial complex-fostered spirit finally run up against objective constraint? Lordy lordy, grant me the strength to accept that which I cannot change…and the obstinacy never to recognize it as such.
I’m ponying up, though. Like Wayne Coyne, I’m standing up and saying hey! I will not perform monotonous, immoral tasks for a debatably living wage – sing it with me. You gotta sing to sing, right? - I’m bidding adieu to the optics industry and I’m taking my tax return on vacation. A few weeks in the Netherlands and India to restore my good humor, that’s what I need, and when I return to a financial nightmare I intend to ignore it utterly and find a career I enjoy. In my realm of perception, this breaks down to compensation based on merit rather than the spinning of clock hands, something related to travel, never-ending learning and problem solving, and no one asking me to do the irrational or the impossible for reasons that they don’t understand themselves. Yes, that sounds like the bees knees. While I’m at it, might as well throw in free coffee too.
I am not quite as naïve as I appear (yes I am, willfully so). Allow me to justify my viewpoint by relating an anecdote: On the day of my brother’s wedding, he asked a family friend for a bit of advice. This was a respected dentist and family-friend, a dentist who had gracefully topped the hill of his life and was enjoying the slide down the other face with a pontoon plane and a house on the lake.
“If you could tell someone my age, at this time in my life, one thing that you wish you had known, what would it be?”
A heavy question, it was joked off at first. Later, however, the man returned. “I thought of something,” he said. “There have been a lot of things in my life that, at the time, seemed very tough and there have been things that I really worried and stressed a lot over.” He paused momentarily, then gingerly stated, “Everything just sort of works out…things end up fine.”
Representatives of the people, what stronger evidence could there be? The funny thing about it, however, is that it rings true. I think there are moments when you hear truth and recognize it as such. Whether by a necessary trick of worldly equilibrium or the demands of genuine divinity, things do have a way of working out.
If you are good to people and do helpful things in the world, it is surprising what you can get away with. Why not be opinionated about what you do for forty-plus hours every week? Why not make some demands of the world? I am not recommending blind stupidity or fantasy creation. No, I am promoting calculated risk-taking and a refusal to settle for something that makes you desperately unhappy. For there is no action without reaction, the drudgery you allow yourself to shoulder will eventuallymanifest itself in one way or another. You owe it to the rest of us, therefore, to make your life work as swimmingly as possible. One rude teller at a supermarket can ruin your whole day. Aristotle has my back on this one. He argued that reasoning is what we humans do best and that all that thinking and head scratching is directed by the immovable mover, the pursuit of happiness. Seriously, if you can’t trust the long-dead tutor of a man that nearly conquered the known world, than whom can you trust?
As I sign off, and get back to minding my own conscience, let me leave you with a possibly trite, certainly catchy aphorism from another philosopher, Hippocrates: "Life is short, art is long, opportunity fleeting, experimenting dangerous, reasoning difficult."