By: MJ
A career is an interesting experience – part work, part life and part identity. The post-career period is a lonely and rare chance to reflect. Reflection is not reserved for shiny things, it is also an essential life tool. This is my second opportunity to look back on a career to enable a clearer look forward to what may come next.
Across cultures and between individuals, life and work carry very different definitions. To some it is just different sides of the same coin and a blended experience – how can one live without a work purpose, or how could one work and not call it life? To others it fluxes between means to an end, roles to play, a series of checklists, thrills to be had. But most of us probably fall into what is a dynamic spectrum: a mix of these things with one day it being work and no joy, and another day work giving you unexpected life.
What I have experienced with work is an often indiscernible blend of good, mundane, and bad. I am left convinced that work that creates a career should not be a lifeless means to an end, nor a cash cow for delayed happiness. Soberingly, I know it can be.
On some days in both of my careers I struggled with daily work just as much as the next person who is entrenched in a hierarchy or on a laborious mission. But those days were far and few between. I got in funks of feeling like my efforts were frivolous and my output meaningless. But while I was in a funk, another person was in a surge, so I looked for those people and strategized my way out of the funk. Sometimes you need a good low point to project you forward more deliberately and to regain momentum. Luckily I have not lived funk-laden careers, but this is manufactured on my part and a reflection of the adept but human people around me. The good and the bad in my careers, (one of six years and one of ten years) have set me up for today and this adventure, and for whatever may come next..
One of the habits I encouraged and had my therapy students on clinical consider prior to departure every day was to answer the question “What was the highlight of your day?”. This was an overt and deliberate prompt. Maybe it was lunch. Maybe it was seeing or feeling something for the first time. Maybe it was a compliment from a patient. Regardless of what the content of their nomination was, it was the perspective gained that was important. Why bother coming back the next day if you can’t find one of many kernels of happiness in the current one?
Early in a teaching career it is easy to become overwhelmed and exhausted. Which is that steep learning curve and 20 to 30 developing personalities walloping your psyche. But it is literally just a phase you are going through. Which is the crux of building a career: endure it for some reward, some ease, some vision, some insight, some money. String enough paychecks together and you have been working. String enough learning curves, challenges overcome, years and friendships together and you have had a career.
Someone once said, roughly paraphrased here, that the things you choose to endure are likely worth the trouble of the lesson. On my solo bike ride almost 20 years ago this lesson translated into “There is always a way through… you just have to find it”. With two careers in retrospect it translates as the more eloquent but less practical: Have the perspective and motivation to stay the course to live the reward; use your experience and identify your desires to choose a hardship that gives you life.
A Zen Buddhist may mutter something about satori at this point.
“What is the fun in doing boring stuff?” asks my kid. He doesn’t yet see all the dualities in life, but he feels the ups and downs. Life wasn’t meant to be easy, and I dare say no one’s ever was. But the joy and satisfaction in the work enabling the completion of a task or in the closure of a career is a reliable launchpad. Perhaps I will “career” again. Time and circumstance will tell.
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Be sure to take the time to contemplate how you define your work and step back at times for some career perspective. A glimpse of truth is a good dose of medicine and may leave you happy and satisfied and regretless on your deathbed.
(For further advice consult with the person you see in the shiny thing each morning.)
