Virus of the Mind

At what point did we start defining ourselves by what we do and what we've got?

Among the big selling points of membership in my college Fraternity is that the skills you acquire and the network you're able to access will help you obtain the high profile, high income, high prestige career that you're looking for. 

This is true, in many respects, in which case I have to ask myself: just what the hell have I, in the last ten years since joining Phi Delta Theta, done with my life?

Four days into 30 years old, and I can tell you, it feels pretty much the same in my personal experience. 

And yet socially, it feels like I'm the slow kid in the class. 

Suddenly, I'm in a new bracket when I take Internet surveys (30-39 years).  I'm the same age that my parents were when they had two kids, a house, two jobs, and two cars, a comfortable life.

I watch TV and see favourite actors who are my age or younger; see ads for lawyers and doctors who graduated the year after I did; read books and magazines written by people five years younger than me and now enjoying the type of material success I still aspire to.

You get the idea.  Personally, it's no different.  Just another hash mark on the wall.  Socially, the culture expects me to have made more of my life than I have.  The culture would have me feel like the first few lyrics of a Nickelback song ("Feels like the bottom of the ninth and I'm never gonna win/This life hasn't turned out quite the way I want it to be").

But then, I ask myself, would I trade the self-awareness I've gained from having gone through difficult career adventures? Of trying and failing to fit my life into the prescribed mail slots that society and the economy have set up for me?

Would I trade self-knowledge for being a successful corporate executive?  Military officer?  Doctor? Lawyer?  Banker? 

And the answer is.....maybe.

Ignorance is bliss, right?  Haven't we all wondered what it would be like to be that asshole driving the convertible Mercedes down the road with the bleach blonde golddigger riding shotgun?  The one with personalized licence plates that read "$MyRide$" and shiny new rims that get replaced with every quarterly bonus?  Don't we all, on occasion, feel society's subtle criticism eating away at our sense of self-confidence and certainty?  Singer Heather Nova calls it "a virus of the mind".  It's definitely contagious, and resistant to most antibiotics.

It would certainly help me with online dating.  My OkCupid profile, frankly, is not that impressive, unless you're measuring from rock bottom (that is, that I bathe, I'm employed, I don't live in my parents' basement, etc..).  I have a job that's unsexy to the point of causing reproductive organs to actually retract.  I drive a dented Sunfire.  I rent.

Again, you get the picture.  I know my value as a person, but on paper, I'm not terribly marketable to the opposite sex (though admittedly, I'm not looking for the type of girl who likes only cars and money, either).

Would I trade this awareness?  Somedays, I would, if only so that I wouldn't be so aware of the lacklustre results of my life versus the ambitious goals I'd set when I was an undergrad. Surely, the unhappiest neanderthal in Plato's Parable of the Cave was the one who knew the shadows on the wall weren't reality: they were just shadows.  Imagine trying to live with the other chained troglodytes afterwards.  Man, they'd give you shit!

Then again, maybe we just need a more authentic definition of identity.

My dad is a trained mechanic and fitter, and that was his work when I was growing up.  Early memories of him involve not the work he was doing, but coming home with food and toys and movies for us kids to enjoy. That's who he was and is today.  He's a great man. 

And yet, I wonder how many people's impressions of him were based solely on what he did for a living? Would they have thought him a failure at life that he was a mechanic at 30 years old?  If so, they weren't seeing the whole picture.

Outsiders don't see inner qualities. The worst thing we can do is make ourselves the outsiders of our own lives. 

Notice that when you have family or friends that you really care about, boyfriends and girlfriends whom you love dearly, in most cases it stops mattering what they do for a living.  What matters more is who they really are outside of work, and how you feel when you're in their presence.  

Dating-wise, I'd be damned lucky to find an available girl my age or younger who sees who I am, without having to lead off with my lacklustre material achievements.  Friend and family-wise, I'm confident most people see my value outside of what I actually do to make money. 

And who am I, authentically, outside of society's prescribed definitions and expectations? 

I'm Jody Aberdeen.  And I can decide for myself what that means.

And I can also post a picture of Homer Simpson at the end of this entry for no reason whatsoever.  Enjoy!