Encounters with Leo, Leah, and a couple of real-life friends
Wizened political sage from The West Wing Leo McGarity intoned, "Presidential elections are won and lost on one square foot of real estate." Pointing at his wrinkled brow, Leo designates the crucial space. "Up here." The campaign to rejoin the 95 or 96% of you who are employed, or for anyone trying to navigate the crucial barrier from outsider to insider, is also maintained in the mind before it is waged anywhere else.
Since a career as an actor or actress seems to be one long job interview, that might explain the state of mind the late, blessedly candid Carrie Fisher opens up to us in The Princess Diarist. "It's not nice being inside my head," she admits. "It's a nice place to visit but I don't want to live in here. It's too crowded; too many traps and pitfalls. I'm tired of it. The same old person, day in and day out. I'd like to try something else." Me too.
Unemployment increases gratitude for breaks from the same old person, day in and day out. The career version of suspended animation sweetens the experience of what might, while working, be dismissed as another walk-in, another phone call, or another email. I had a couple of those particularly blessed intrusions this week. I rode into the "battle" of another interview with my friend and mentor Gerry. From a distance, I've admired his surety in himself as he looks back on a successful career, on times when he had the confidence to tell different bosses they were wrong. He relates changing the course of a meeting with Leo-like directness: "We are done talking about that. Let's move on." Those aren't sentences or sentiments for which I have been known.
Unsought unemployment enforces time for reflection, and time for reflection to turn into envy, or even self-pity. Any difference I note between myself and someone else not currently on the outside looking in prompts the question, is that the special sauce? Or, alternately, has my sauce been a little TOO special as I have missed opportunities to blend into the recipe that the rest of the culture agrees on? But this journey to a job interview was another opportunity for a reboot. It was also an opportunity to observe Gerry up close . Expecting oracular wisdom when I asked for his help on how to answer the upcoming question of where I see myself in five years when what I was interviewing for was not a long-term fit, he said, "I don't like the question." It presupposes, he pointed out, that everyone over the course of five years is going to get promoted, or wants to be. There aren't, he said matter-of-factly, enough supervisor positions in any job for that to happen.
At the perfect time, then, just before I interviewed, he showed the fallacy of a particularly virulent self-criticism. My most recent job was one I liked, and I held it for seven years. It yielded a lot of opportunities for positive student interactions that I might have seen less of had I chased advancement in title with all my might. After the fact, I criticize myself for lacking the ambition which might have helped to insulate me from unsought change, but there it is. Even someone with plenty of confidence to close life's deals validates, without knowing it, the possibility that contentment in my job might have been, mostly, an asset for me. Even my Facebook statuses from those years, I must admit as I tell my inner critic to take a seat, show a counselor who really enjoyed the various flavors of his individual encounters.
My other encounter this week with "something else" besides my internal self-examination was one Gerry would have supported, but from a very different quarter. Gerry has been a mainstay reinforcing my writing efforts in 2017 as I try for thought-provoking and sometimes end up at complicated. As evidenced in this week's effort, the television show The West Wing, which went off the air in 2006 and was fairly low rated even then, is never very far from my thoughts or my blogs. It persists in my thinking and writing in the same way that Mr. Dick in David Copperfield couldn't help but write about King Charles losing his head. My friends deal with the fixation as tolerantly as Mr. Dick's friends deal with his in Copperfield, but it is unlikely to accelerate any growth in my readership.
This week, as I watched the transition between Christ challenging us at the end of Luke 12 to rise above our petty disputes and come to agreement with our neighbors and the jarring introduction which begins Luke 13 where Jesus is told of Galileans whose blood was mingled with their sacrifices, I thought of The West Wing. "Rise above?!" His critics seem to snarl, "Do You know how bad this world is?! Do you know what THEY did?! WE have every right to be upset and to take action on that indignance." Mining that transition and reading between the lines, I saw a West Wing scene in which President Bartlett, generally admirable, likewise goads his opponent for not caring with enough passion when people suffer. The "something else" that contended with my usual inner coach telling me I should choose more relevant examples was a Facebook follower named D'Aries who has lived half his life since The West Wing went off the air. Still, the show, and my stubborn perseveration on it, connected us across our difference in age, experience, and skin color. He, a former student at the institution where I was previously employed, reached out to say he thought the analogy particularly powerful. My words, he said, painted a picture he could relate to.
In closing, maybe the distortion of the idea of being all things to all men, Scripturally noble in itself, keeps us from being grateful for what we are and preoccupies us with what we are not. No key fits every lock. Just as in Psalm 144:9 the psalmist celebrates after the peculiarities of his experience that have shaped a NEW song to HIS God, so it is with our experience. It shapes a temperament and a testimony that cannot be expected to engage every person or be ideal for every situation. We sing our newest God honoring son because our song because God made us to sing it uniquely to Him. Who else is listening, appreciating, or applying is decidedly secondary.
Since a career as an actor or actress seems to be one long job interview, that might explain the state of mind the late, blessedly candid Carrie Fisher opens up to us in The Princess Diarist. "It's not nice being inside my head," she admits. "It's a nice place to visit but I don't want to live in here. It's too crowded; too many traps and pitfalls. I'm tired of it. The same old person, day in and day out. I'd like to try something else." Me too.
Unemployment increases gratitude for breaks from the same old person, day in and day out. The career version of suspended animation sweetens the experience of what might, while working, be dismissed as another walk-in, another phone call, or another email. I had a couple of those particularly blessed intrusions this week. I rode into the "battle" of another interview with my friend and mentor Gerry. From a distance, I've admired his surety in himself as he looks back on a successful career, on times when he had the confidence to tell different bosses they were wrong. He relates changing the course of a meeting with Leo-like directness: "We are done talking about that. Let's move on." Those aren't sentences or sentiments for which I have been known.
Unsought unemployment enforces time for reflection, and time for reflection to turn into envy, or even self-pity. Any difference I note between myself and someone else not currently on the outside looking in prompts the question, is that the special sauce? Or, alternately, has my sauce been a little TOO special as I have missed opportunities to blend into the recipe that the rest of the culture agrees on? But this journey to a job interview was another opportunity for a reboot. It was also an opportunity to observe Gerry up close . Expecting oracular wisdom when I asked for his help on how to answer the upcoming question of where I see myself in five years when what I was interviewing for was not a long-term fit, he said, "I don't like the question." It presupposes, he pointed out, that everyone over the course of five years is going to get promoted, or wants to be. There aren't, he said matter-of-factly, enough supervisor positions in any job for that to happen.
At the perfect time, then, just before I interviewed, he showed the fallacy of a particularly virulent self-criticism. My most recent job was one I liked, and I held it for seven years. It yielded a lot of opportunities for positive student interactions that I might have seen less of had I chased advancement in title with all my might. After the fact, I criticize myself for lacking the ambition which might have helped to insulate me from unsought change, but there it is. Even someone with plenty of confidence to close life's deals validates, without knowing it, the possibility that contentment in my job might have been, mostly, an asset for me. Even my Facebook statuses from those years, I must admit as I tell my inner critic to take a seat, show a counselor who really enjoyed the various flavors of his individual encounters.
My other encounter this week with "something else" besides my internal self-examination was one Gerry would have supported, but from a very different quarter. Gerry has been a mainstay reinforcing my writing efforts in 2017 as I try for thought-provoking and sometimes end up at complicated. As evidenced in this week's effort, the television show The West Wing, which went off the air in 2006 and was fairly low rated even then, is never very far from my thoughts or my blogs. It persists in my thinking and writing in the same way that Mr. Dick in David Copperfield couldn't help but write about King Charles losing his head. My friends deal with the fixation as tolerantly as Mr. Dick's friends deal with his in Copperfield, but it is unlikely to accelerate any growth in my readership.
This week, as I watched the transition between Christ challenging us at the end of Luke 12 to rise above our petty disputes and come to agreement with our neighbors and the jarring introduction which begins Luke 13 where Jesus is told of Galileans whose blood was mingled with their sacrifices, I thought of The West Wing. "Rise above?!" His critics seem to snarl, "Do You know how bad this world is?! Do you know what THEY did?! WE have every right to be upset and to take action on that indignance." Mining that transition and reading between the lines, I saw a West Wing scene in which President Bartlett, generally admirable, likewise goads his opponent for not caring with enough passion when people suffer. The "something else" that contended with my usual inner coach telling me I should choose more relevant examples was a Facebook follower named D'Aries who has lived half his life since The West Wing went off the air. Still, the show, and my stubborn perseveration on it, connected us across our difference in age, experience, and skin color. He, a former student at the institution where I was previously employed, reached out to say he thought the analogy particularly powerful. My words, he said, painted a picture he could relate to.
In closing, maybe the distortion of the idea of being all things to all men, Scripturally noble in itself, keeps us from being grateful for what we are and preoccupies us with what we are not. No key fits every lock. Just as in Psalm 144:9 the psalmist celebrates after the peculiarities of his experience that have shaped a NEW song to HIS God, so it is with our experience. It shapes a temperament and a testimony that cannot be expected to engage every person or be ideal for every situation. We sing our newest God honoring son because our song because God made us to sing it uniquely to Him. Who else is listening, appreciating, or applying is decidedly secondary.
Comments
Post a Comment