What Color Is Your Parachute? (7 page)

Unemployment is sometimes an opportunity, despite its ghastly disguise as a major calamity, in our lives. And some people know this, instinctively. I find that surprising.

You would think that during this so-called “
jobless recovery
” from a severe Recession, what would be most on the mind of both the employed and the unemployed would be the difficulty of the job-hunt currently:
“How do you hunt for work in a time like this, when employers in large majority simply aren’t yet hiring?” “How can you find work when 17 million people are out of work, in the U.S.?”
That sort of thing.

As we discussed in the
previous chapter
, many job-hunters out there
are
thinking exactly that. But what is surprising is that so many are
not
. Rather, they are using this year—most especially if they are unemployed—as a kind of “time out”—an opportunity to pause, catch their breath, and rethink what they want to do with the rest of their life. They are starting to look much further down the road than just settling for
any
job. And they are thinking that it would be nice to know where they’re going, before they set out. They say such things as:
“I’m out of work, and I can’t go back to my old job, but I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life. I have no idea where to go from here. Sure, I’m interested in how to job-hunt better. But frankly, I can’t even begin to job-hunt until I know what I’m looking for. I need help in figuring out precisely what kind of work I want to do in the future, before I go looking.”

Of course, this is not exactly a new insight. Back in 1865 the author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (née
Lewis Carroll
) in his book
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
wrote this oft-quoted passage:

Is this a good time to try to figure out your purpose in life, your calling, your vocation, your passion, your “dream job”? I mean, jobs are tough to come by, right now. At least, for a lot of us. Wouldn’t it be more realistic to just settle for a barely okay job, when so many people are out of work? Well, that’s your call. But remember this: nine out of ten workers in the U.S. still have jobs. Nine out of ten. There is no reason why you can’t join them. It may require some hard work, and it may take some time, but you can do it. And you can hunt for work that really fits you, and gets your juices going, because the odd fact is: given the present state of the economy it can take you just as long to find a poor job as it can take you to find a good job. So, why not look for a good job? More than that, why not look for a job that really fits
you
, and gets you excited about getting up in the morning! That’s a challenge for you!

Challenges come in the form of questions. In this case, you know the questions. They aren’t new. You’ve thought of them during some dark night, when you just couldn’t sleep.
Why are you here on earth? What’s different about you, from anybody else? Why are your fingerprints unlike anyone else’s on the face of the earth, or in the total course of history?
You know the questions.

And you know the answers. Actually, it’s just one answer, and it all comes down to this: the world has never seen anyone quite like you before, and it will never see another You again. And there is something you have to contribute to this world that the world needs
from You,
no matter how small or unimportant you may think you are, in the grand scheme of things. You were born, you are breathing, you are here, because there is something you have to contribute to the world that the world really, really needs. At least in that place, at least in this time, at
least with your style, at least with your character and stamp upon it. Someone needs you. Someone’s life has been, and will be, better because of you. Maybe many many “somebody”s. Be you a health care professional, or scientist, or engineer, or techie, or digger of ditches, it doesn’t matter. The world needs all these things, but animated specifically by your spirit, your brains, your personality, beneath and in it all.

Your purpose in life isn’t
just
a matter of what kind of work you do. It’s a matter of who you are, what kind of person you are, and whether you choose to be the best You that you can possibly be, or not.

Work isn’t the be-all and end-all, but it is an important part of the reason you are here on earth. And it is the hardest part to define to yourself.

Identifying a job that you really could feel passionate about, before you ever go out on your job hunt, has great benefits for your actual job hunt. Most people dream
big;
but then they cut way back on their dream, because they think that’s just being realistic:
“Well, that would be a real dream job, but I know I could never find a job like that.”

Well, actually, you don’t know any such thing.

What you do know, and so do we, is that if you cut your dream down to only half its original size, you will almost certainly then hunt for it with only half the enthusiasm. As some wag famously rephrased this: cut your vast dream in half, and you will make only a half vast attempt at finding it.

I have seen, so many times, people go out for an interview that ended in their not being hired. And then I would detect a note of glee as they announced that they got turned down. I think this is because, in their heart of hearts, they didn’t really want that job; they didn’t want to
just settle.

So, your goal if you are out of work should be to figure out what your dream job would be, and then look for
all
of that dream. For, if you decide to pursue your whole dream, your ideal job, the work that you would die to find and die to do, I guarantee that you will hunt for it
with all your heart.
It is that
passion
, excitement, and enthusiasm of yours—that
drive
and
determination to find it, at all costs—
that often makes
the difference between successful job-hunters or career-changers, and unsuccessful ones.

Sure, you may not find your whole dream in every particular. At least immediately. You may initially find just three quarters of it, or only half of it. But one thing I guarantee you, you will find a larger portion of it if you set your sights high, than if you set your sights too low from the start.

And if you keep on, in the years ahead, never
settling
, always determined to get closer and closer to it, with every step you take and every decision you make, as you venture through the rest of your life, you will lead a life that feels at times almost magical. And filled with wonder.

But defining what you want out of life, getting a detailed picture in your head, of where you want to go from here with your life, is not the easiest task in the world. People talk about it, sometimes, as though it were. Experts tell us we need to find a purpose in life. Then they fall silent. What they don’t tell us is how we go about doing that. They don’t spell out that in most cases, this is going to be hard work. We will have to roll up our sleeves and determine to spend real effort and time before we figure this one out, for ourselves and for our life.

There was an old hymn I heard as a child, and I loved the poetry of its words. It was a sardonic question, addressed to the soul, about expectations. It went like this: “Shall I be carried to the skies, on flowery beds of ease?” The answer, which all who sung it knew, was: Fat chance. Fat chance.

In this life, we can expect we will sometimes have to struggle, to labor, to sweat, if we are to achieve anything. We cannot expect anyone to come and carry us onward and upward,
on flowery beds of ease.

And “flowery beds of ease” are not in store for us, either, when we set out to determine our purpose here on earth. It feels more, sometimes, like a bed of nails.

Well, no one ever said that finding your dream job, finding your purpose and mission in this life, would be a piece of cake. It’s hard. It will call for character, and determination, and persistence. But you’ve got that in you. You wouldn’t have lasted even this long, if you didn’t.
Life is always a series of problems, a series of challenges to be met and conquered. This is just another one of them, albeit in some ways the most important one.