Lucky Me

Freedom comes with baggage

When I was a kid, the grownups looked like they just survived World War III when they came home from work. All they could talk about was what a pain in elbow (or some other body part) So-and-So was, who said or did what unforgivably offensive thing, and on and on. Often I was the nearest target for venting frustration, so my feelings got hurt and family life suffered. Yet I also would be told repeatedly: “Don’t end up like me. Go to college and make something of yourself. Don’t end up feeling like you’ve wasted your life.”

I had difficulty understanding these lectures. Like most young people I thought I’d be young forever. Concepts such as “have to” or “should” didn’t mean much to me. Plus it’s hard to take to heart advice that comes from someone who just yelled at you over nothing much. But the thing I truly did not understand—although I wouldn’t have known how to say it—was why so many people seemed trapped and unhappy in the so-called land of the free. I thought it had something to do with growing up, so, like Peter Pan, I’d stay young forever. End of problem.

Well, Fate had other ideas. I grew up and went to college. In fact, I went to college so much I got a Ph.D. Certainly I’ve made something of myself, though the noun that most aptly captures what I’ve become would vary widely, depending on whom you asked. (And this is, after all, a G-rated blog.) As for wasting my life, most of the time I’m too busy to worry about it, which I suppose means my life is not lived for naught. Sometimes I come home in a bad mood, which is an ever-humbling experience. I am reminded how hard it is to act happy when your day has been like one endless root canal.     

All things considered, I like being a college professor. I don’t love it. If I won the Powerball Jackpot I’d be out the door in nothing flat. But, as I predicted would be the case, I like it very much. Though I love writing fiction, I purposefully did not major in English, as I thought it would spoil my pleasure in writing. I didn’t want my livelihood to depend on my raison d'être, as that would be too much pressure. So I stuck with the social sciences because they made sense, they got me thinking, and, well . . . I liked them. A wise person told me once that I would be happier with two careers, and that seems to be true. My inner egghead and artiste called a truce a long time ago.

There have been moments when I’ve hated being a prof. But the storm clouds pass and most of the time I remain grateful for the opportunity, especially when I consider how difficult it is to get a tenure-track job in today’s world. And I am tenured and a full professor. Given all the screw-ups I have committed, I sometimes marvel that I did at least one thing right.

Besides, the things I don’t like about being a college professor are not about being a college professor. Nor, for that matter, are they about how democratic and free our nation actually is or is not. They are things that would come up no matter what I did for a living, and in many forms of government. In more or less order of importance, the things that cause me problems at work are:

1) Other people. We say our society does not have arranged marriages, but in a way we do. Because you often are stuck working side by side for years and years with people you would not have chosen to know. Even if I were an independently wealthy author, writing a book takes a village. There are agents and editors and publicity people and proofreaders and cover artists. There is no such thing as a conflict-free career, probably because there is no such thing as a conflict-free human being.

2) Bureaucracy. Rules, red tape, you have to do this, you can’t do that . . . it’s everywhere. And again, even bestselling authors have to follow standardized procedures and contract fine print, not to mention laws and policies. Social structure turns everyone into a pretzel of some sort. You have to work within limits of time, place, expectation, legality, and any number of other things. The aspects that most appeal to you about what you do for a living may present themselves only sporadically at best.

3) Other people. (See Point Number One.)

As a college prof, I currently am teaching the next generation of leaders—the people I will depend on to keep my life safe and prosperous when I retire. They seem much wiser than I was at their age. They seem to already know that life involves compromise. And even more important, they seem to know that that’s okay.

I spent much of my life thinking that if I did something I didn’t want to do, I was a failure, because true freedom meant never having to conform to the expectations of others. I did not realize that non-conformity could become its own kind of conformity, especially when millions of other people are non-conforming in the same way. I also did not realize that bureaucracy is unavoidable. Everyone follows at least some of the rules most of the time. Most of all, I did not know how relatively spoiled and privileged I was even to harbor such fantasies. Most people who have ever lived, and most people alive in the world today, decide little if anything for themselves.

In short, life comes with a Catch-22: To do what you want to do, you have to spend a lot of time not doing what you want to do. And if at least some of the time you are doing something you like and/or love, you are, in a global sense, one of the privileged few.