Wouldn’t it be great if we all grew up to be what we wanted to be? The world would be full of nurses, firemen, and ballerinas.
— Lily Tomlin (b. 1939) American comedian and actress
Saturday Night Live (22 Nov 1975)
There’s a school of thought that says you can make of your life whatever you will, be whatever you want to be, achieve whatever you have the will to achieve. And there’s a school of thought that says that, at most (though most people don’t realize even this), you can only control your reactions, how you cope with what the world makes of your life.
Growing up, at various times I wanted to be a scientist, a computer programmer, a lawyer, a teacher, a journalist, a history professor. Remarkably enough, I actually managed a couple of these.
I got into computers inadvertently, offered a post-graduate internship as a systems programmer at the college computer center. I’d written some help files on how to use the mainframe text editor as a word processor (at a time when such wasn’t common for the students, and, in fact, most professors forbade reports turned in on dot matrix printers). I needed to find a job to earn some money to be able to pay for graduate studies in history.
After not much success at various interviews at the career center, my girlfriend at the time noted there were two one-year internships at the new college computer center — either the head of the student help desk staff (“senior consultant”), or else systems programmer. I figure, what the heck, and applied for the help desk job.
And got offered the other, as they already had a candidate for the senior consultant job. I pointed out that I didn’t know nothin’ about being a systems programmer, Miz Scarlet, but they in turn noted that was why it was an internship. And, besides, they really wanted someone who wasn’t a math or science major to be involved with the computer center, and I was one of the few that met those qualifications.
And so I ended up learning how to wrangle a VM/SP system on an IBM 4341 mainframe — which included doing an upgrade to SP2. And that got me into a job doing much the same the following year …
My teaching experience was more direct. I saw in the paper that Los Angeles Unified had a big shortage of teachers, and was hiring them on under “emergency credentials” — pass some basic knowledge tests, enroll for your credential somewhere, get a crash course in classroom management, and teach while you learn.
And I went for it. My mom was a teacher, and it had been one of those things I’d wanted to do. I figured I’d apply as a high school social studies teacher, hitting my favorite subject …
… and was informed that was not in a shortage, but I could be a high school math teacher, or an elementary school teacher. I chose the former without giving it much thought. (I’d done well in math right up to when we hit trig, but I’d never had a passion for it.)
And I ended up teaching for two years at Farmdale Elementary in East LA — the first year thrown into a bilingual 2nd grade class (I team-taught with an actual bilingual 1st grade teacher), the second covering a 5th/6th combo. And I discovered it wasn’t for me (or, rather, I didn’t feel up to putting into the job what I thought it, and the kids, deserved). And I headed back to computers, only now it was about “PCs” and “networks” and “email” and “dBase” and …
So no real lessons there, I guess, except that life can be serendipitous sometimes — and sometimes something you have to make a conscious decision to change. I’ve been lucky, very lucky, in the opportunities and employers I’ve had. Yes, I also worked hard, and life was not always skittles and beer, but I don’t have any significant regrets to date — especially, love or hate my job at any given time, my job has never been my life.
Yeah, I want my job to be be something worthwhile for 40-odd hours a week. I like feeling professionally fulfilled, and getting a decent paycheck and all that. But (cue “Five O’Clock World“) my real life is that I get to spend the rest of the time being myself, being with my loved ones, and my friends, being a husband and a father, playing games and reading books and pursuing hobbies — being someone who does stuff like that.
Which, ultimately, is what I really wanted to grow up to be. So maybe I’m even luckier than I realize.
And that’s the truth, ptttppht!
Sometimes I wonder if there are Christians out there who feel they would like to move toward the more human and inclusive and redemptive aspects of their faith, but are having trouble visualizing exactly how that works. If they even take a step in that direction, they are condemned by their local Pharisees. And who would be there to greet them, to help them work it out if they made a break? And there are atheists who too easily feel that all Christians are Bryan Fischer or Pat Robertson. Luckily in both cases there’s a bright light on the Hill.
I’d set aside reading this post until the weekend because I knew it would trigger a look in the mirror, which is seldom an experience I can enjoy. I’ve had various career ambitions in life, none of which have come to pass for equally varied reasons. Long periods of unemployment as a young adult, health issues and dumb decisions mark my path. I’ve expended a lot of ammunition in hopes of hitting some target.
Today I am delighted to have a good job and to be (hopefully) a positive influence on college students. I struggle to think and focus; it turns out the human brain does not have unlimited ability to recover from injuries. My central challenge might be the title of a book that would make a beeline for the clearance rack: How to find satisfaction even if you never accomplish a single thing you set out to do.
I think both Christ and the Buddha would answer that final challenge by suggesting that a focus on accomplishing a set goal is an act of ego, of the world — and, in fact, this is acknowledged by the very idea that to achieve, one must have the willpower to do so.
Satisfaction, on the other hand, might stem from something very different — a fittingness in the world, doing good (whether or not one does well), being of service to others, laying aside the ego in order to love and serve one’s neighbor (and so love and serve oneself).
Perhaps that’s one of the problems of the world — that we applaud achievement, and so encourage folks to pursue their dreams, regardless of what it does to them or to those around them. Pursuing dreams is good — doing so at all costs is not. The world applauds those who do so, hence the clearance rack. But, then, we both know what both Jesus and Buddha said about the applause of the world.