A Reminder for the Career Obsessed

At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The problem with inspirational quotes about capabilities and strengths and finding your place is that too often they are quoted in the context of having a better career, of being a better employee or entrepreneur, of being better able to please The Man, as if your only purpose and value in life is what you do to gain money. Skills, both “hard” and “soft” are considered, at least in America, as business skills. Sometimes they slide into relationship skills (especially “soft skills”), but mainly they are focused on big “C” Career. We go to a university, not to gain wisdom, but to gain skills and techniques and a sheepskin so we can be employable. Education is about jobs, not about being better humans. Ah, America. Silent Cal Coolidge had it right when he said “the business of America is Business.”

I get it. What you do “for a living” is hugely important, of course. You have to bring home the bacon, slay the dragons, climb the ladder, make your mark, and all the rest of those career clichés. If you’re lucky and you’re working, you might have a few weeks off a year, ideally paid. You work 48, 49, 50 weeks every 52-week year. If you are self-employed, you’re always working, or at least, always on call. Most of your life you are at work. So, sure, you want to be good at it.

The result is articles like “Six surefire ways to ace that interview!” and “How to deal with your co-worker who eats limburger at his cubicle!” and “Ten ways to find Zen on your commute!,” and business books that dabble in philosophy, like “Sun Tzu and You!,” and “Effective Psychopathy in the Boardroom.”

Two weeks ago, I wrote about impostor syndrome and my fear of public speaking. While I gave examples from my career, these conditions affected everything in my life, from grade school forward. I looked at the need to overcome this not just as a career move, but a life move. Even though work makes up so much of our lives, work is not solely our lives. But by God some of us sure think so. How many folks die just after retirement. How many folks eschew their spouses and kids and friends and spend all their time at work.

I am as guilty as anyone. One of the worst days of my life was a Valentine's Day I spent on the road. I was out at a client, staying in a corporate hotel. That evening, the hotel restaurant placed a rose on each table. It was the hotel’s attempt to be festive, but boy, was it bleak. Men and women in business attire, sitting alone at each table, with a rose to remind them of where they were not. I called my wife after dinner, of course, but here’s the thing: I remember that night vividly. I remember that I was not with the love of my life on Valentine’s Day. I remember that feeling well. What I don’t remember is who the client was, what the project was, and not even the city I was in.

Our lives are bigger than our jobs. I look at life as, I’m Here! And then we do things, like create, and observe, and learn, and love, and help, and work, and play, and then we share all of this with our loved-ones and our friends and our colleagues and with random strangers. We can become myopic and single-focused and tactical, but for me, losing my wife Jenny and seeing my son grow up and seeing some of my friends and family leave this Earth or leave their minds, we need to embrace the now and we need to view life in its entirety. We need to stop and breathe, and we need to embrace moments, and say what Kurt Vonnegut’s uncle Alex said during joyful times: “Hold it! Hold it! If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is!”