I asked a VP1 at work how he finds fulfillment at his job. To preface the question, of course I added some personal flair, like how I personally find my work miserable. Maybe, because he’s a VP and manages people, with all those meetings, he has some sort of accountability to other people, and that’s what motivates him to keep working. Every day, a whole entourage is peering behind his back and asking him about his opinion, and I assumed it’s the audience that keeps his job exciting.
The first part of his reply was refreshing, which was that when you first start, everything’s about you. There’s an obsession to putting your name on everything you possibly can, smearing your sweat, tears, and probably literal shit all over anything you can find to smear it over. Getting credit for everything that you’re able to, and fueling your day-to-day with your accolades and ratings at work.
Of course, the second part was the whole I now love seeing people I’ve mentored grow which is great and all and easier to say when you’re older and also making millions of dollars a year. And, you’re a proud father of two children, which might change the way you see your job. A lot of people claim to have this switch from “me” to “us” but in all sincerity, I am but a selfish, hedonistic twentysomething rearing her ugly damned head and god knows I do not know if me will ever become us let alone when.
minor spoilers incoming for Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
I read Never Let Me Go a few months ago in five hours2 and at the time, I didn’t really process what was happening in the book. I mean I knew they were all going to die, but aren’t we all going to die anyway, and it didn’t really seem to matter because they didn’t even care that much about this whole dying thing. They knew their whole lives and weren’t angry about it, just like how most of us aren’t angry most of the time about how we’re going to die also, some sooner than later but dead all the same. Yeah, the organ donor thing is disgusting, but this book isn’t really about the organs to me, it’s about Hailsham.
In my privileged life going to a good college and now a cushy, well-paid job at The Company, I feel I’ve been attending some form of Hailsham for the entirety of my life until the past eight months.3 I was told to study hard so I could get into a good college, and on top of that, I was juggling track and field, tennis, choir, and volunteer work. This time spent “getting into a good college” meant everything had to be justified with a reason — no, this reason could not just be that you liked it — aligned with your Common Application to college. And what about after college? Of course you must get a good job — no, this job could not just be that you liked it — that is prestigious and respectable and pays well.
And so I spent all this time acting “wordly” in my youth — playing tennis, singing, learning the “History of the Americas” and “Spanish” in my IB classes, taking AP Calculus and Music Theory, dissecting cow brains, carrying people into ambulances, plucking a mandolin — only to sit at a prestigious and respectable desk job that pays well. Hailsham spent all this time giving me these skills so that I could be on my laptop all day until I retire and ultimately die, and Hailsham never hid this fact from me the whole time I was there.
spoilers end
Sometimes, I like to sit at the Crate & Barrel on Houston and Broadway on some unaffordably plush couch hoping someone might notice me. Usually I play some random classical music that makes me sad, and I just sit there looking all sad, mostly because I am actually sad. But I hope I look a special type of sad, the type of sad that makes someone who can actually afford every piece of furniture at Crate & Barrel able to spot my sad as an existential sad, and they can lift me out from the depths of remarkable unremarkableness by some special stroke of luck. As if lottery tickets fell out the sky.
And in their noticing my total unremakableness, I will somehow be made whole, and catapulted into the grandeur of specialness, the type of specialness that gives you fuck you money and fuck you confidence, the type of specialness that gives you the ability to vanquish all your enemies and mortal quandaries, the type of specialness that wrongs everyone and everything who ever wronged you by a little more wrong, because we all need a little more wrong to feel a little more special. Take what you can get. A few pumps to our constantly leaking inflatable egos.
And yet, I leave that stupid materialistic store with nothing in hand except disappointment that exactly nothing has changed about my life, except I spent thirty more minutes hoping for the actual impossible, and that my delusions are also the fantasies of many others who have walked this earth, hoping to have an easy way out of this feeling, the feeling of having a hard time being an absolute nobody.4
To clarify, at The Company, there are only a handful of VPs, and they all report to the C-suite. Not like a “VP” from another company like Goldman Sachs where they’re a dime a dozen.
Because I am an obsessive person, and I had to know what happened. In classic Ishiguro fashion, of course nothing did. I do say classic as in I read half of Remains of the Day in my junior year of high school and wrote an essay using Sparknotes as one does as a high schooler.
The past eight months being the first eight months (of many) being employed.
Some unsolicited advice: do not move to The City if you have a particularly hard time with this. And god this was disgustingly, disturbingly pretentious as someone trying to work toward not being “a selfish, hedonistic twentysomething rearing her ugly damned head” and yeah, I did just quote myself, and yeah, that was also disgusting.
I relate super hard... thanks for sharing your thoughts about feeling like a nobody and validating my own feelings about it:) Maybe it's better to be a part of team nobody than team special. Team special might feel lonelier...
there’s always a dream to chase.
when you’re young, it’s what they tell you will make you happy. your parents: they were young once too, but now they are old and have responsibilities and regrets and most importantly wisdom. they know what you need to do so that you can find happiness, maybe because they never found it themselves. hindsight is 20/20. do as i say and not as i did. it’s a dream passed down to your innocent mind, and it whispers a soothing lullaby. everything will work out in the end.
mentors, teachers, friends. they chase dreams too, of course, but the ones you trust can help you with your own. they encourage you, tell you to reach farther and higher, because they know that you can. that’s what makes you different, better, special. the words melt in your mouth and stick to your tongue. indescribable in taste, but you can try. sweet. thrilling. addictive. you can have more; all you need to do is dream a little longer.
and the thing about dreams is that you don’t think, not when you’re in one. you watch your body float and waltz, following the urges of whatever subconscious impulses crackle through your brain, but it’s detached from thought. you let yourself be led, not knowing the destination. you convince yourself that there must be some sort of ending, a sense of narrative satisfaction, a point in your life when it will all be worth it. the hardships i endure, they must pay off. each struggle has meaning, a hard edge of a truth which gets me close to the Truth. everything will work out in the end.
but now the dream peters out. you wake up, in a kind of a haze, and the sticky stupor of your mind gradually sloughs off a false reality. the blurry future focuses and sharpens into the present, faster than you can react. the sun peeks in through the blinds, the claustrophobia of the cluttered world pushes in, and you gasp for lucid breath in a quiet apartment. it’s seven a.m., and you need to get ready for work.
the dream fades away like most dreams do. mist scattering in the morning light. a cup of coffee to replace the hollow it leaves, or maybe a cold shower. does it matter? you’ve chased the dream and cornered it, conquered it, made it your own, and that’s what you’ve always planned to do. the life that you chose to lead has led you to now, staring blankly at a reflection of your bed-headed self, toothbrush in hand. a thought in your head.
does everything work out in the end?