Millionaire & Truck Driver: A Marriage of Skills Not Status

I have a friend I met in the 80's---and for those of you losing count, that was almost thirty years ago---and he was a construction contractor for much of his life. He also owned a nightclub at one time and would tell stories of booking Flip Wilson, Tina Turner and drinking with Dean Martin. He just lost his fortune in the recession (real estate crash) and at sixty years old needed to do something else. He has been a millionaire at least twice in his life, and he recently decided to get a job as a truck driver. "I never thought I'd be in this kind of job, I used to think it was beneath me, but I needed something I could do now, on my own, and with little initial investment," he said to me. "I figure I can do this for ten years and retire if I do it the way I want to do it."

This is the new face of employment: the marriage of diverse skills as opposed to employment status seeking.

For most of us growing up, we went to school to get a higher paying job, hopefully with a fancy job title. This job title was our status in the world. "What do you do," is the American follow up to "Hello." What we did was who we were, how we judged our success and ultimately how proud we were of ourselves. Fair or not, true or not, it did not matter, that was the way we were raised.

Things in the 21st century have changed though, and fast. Corporate executives are working at Starbucks and Corporate Coaches are janitors. The new question of the century is not what CAN I do, it is what WILL I do. What am I willing to do? Underlying the willingness issue is a point of pride/esteem. What work is beneath me? This is the question that is nagging everyone these days especially those over thirty because they are still part of the old school of thought that says some jobs are "beneath me." This is a troubling, though pervasive, belief that some jobs are "too low" for me. We are witnessing the beginning of the end of this belief system because the economy has forced a huge contingent of extremely educated and trained people to take any work wherever they can.

What is problematic with the whole "that job is beneath me" kind of thinking is the extra hardship it is causing some people. The old expression is, "Pride goeth before a fall," meaning better to let go of pride before you hit the ground. Unfortunately I am watching many people hitting the (economic) ground. I am hearing stories every month of people selling their possessions on E-Bay before they will work for $12 an hour. One person, with two previous car repossessions, took her last $2,000 and bought (more like rented) a "no money down" car with monthly payments she knew she could not afford so she could look rich for a while (until it was inevitably repossessed also). The only point I am making here is that I believe for the next decade, people are going to be moving more toward matching skill levels rather than ego levels. Like the millionaire, contractor, club owner becoming a truck driver because he figured the system out, highly skilled workers, executives and degree holders will begin to see and value any employment as progress in the new hard economy. They will begin to adjust their pride levels to a new practicality---"money is money" and "I am not my job title." A culture where work ethic is more respected than job title would be a welcome change and one that is already in progress.

Before I go further, I must point out to the readers of this blog who have not yet read my book (a thought I try not to imagine) that I too have had my post graduate degree, humbling job phase so I know first hand all of the psychological issues that come with such a "fall." Believe me. But I want to end this piece with a silver lining in all of this job adjustment the nation is doing. The silver lining is profound and it goes like this: what if a majority of people "fell" from their status jobs and learned that after the loss of status, the only thing that is truly important is the people they work with and their relationship with them? What if "status" had less to do with what you did and more to do with who you are to work with? What if your focus became less about job titles and more about job relationships and how important it is to relate and support your fellow employees? I honestly believe that we as a nation are being asked by this crisis to move one more step beyond greed and power and move to the most important thing in life: Relationship. If this crisis does even a little toward moving people into work relationships with people whom they would not have previously related and allow them to find their common humanity, then from my perspective, the whole crisis would bring a "net plus" to the nation. Then, if these newly forged work relationships brought down the old walls of class/ego/status separation between people of all shapes and sizes even a little bit, then, as the song goes, "what a wonderful world it would be."

Staying Too Long With A "Friend"---A Frog In Water

I was talking with a female client of mine recently, and she was recounting how she had "stayed too long" with her previous husbands. When I asked her to explain she said, "I knew a long while before I divorced them that I was not in love and that I really couldn't stand them, but I stayed anyway. I don't know why." It reminded me of the true scientific discovery that if you put a frog in boiling water it will jump out immediately, but if you put it in cold water and and turn up the heat slowly, it will not react to the incrementally increasing temperature and boil itself to death. People, like frogs, it seems, also do not react to emotional pain as forcefully if it is incremental. Have you ever had a friend who did negative things to you like criticize you constantly, put you down in front of others, or regularly say negative things about you to your other friends? It is interesting to see how many people have these "frienemies" in their lives and somehow rationalize keeping them as a friend. I am leaving the issue of spouses out of this discussion because there are particular complexities to extracting oneself from a marriage as I have pointed out in previous blog topics. The topic of "frienemies" though is interesting because very few people actually rid themselves of these people around them who are causing consistent emotional pain. Their cruelty is often rationalized away with comments like, "Oh that's just how he/she is," or "He/she doesn't mean anything by it." But the truth of the matter is that what they do to us hurts more than we often admit to ourselves, so why do we put up with this for so long?

One reason, like the frog, is that the relationship did not start out that way and it may have gotten worse slowly over time. Another reason is that they are not friends with which we spend that much time so we let the behavior go...every single time. But what about a "good" friend--one that we care about and whose opinion really does matter to us? Why do we keep them in our lives when they keep doing such mean things to us? I just want to suggest one reason we stay that most do not think about. It is about Loyalty---and in this case a misplaced Loyalty. It is not a loyalty to the friend because a part of us knows they are not a real, supportive friend, rather it is a loyalty to a relationship line. We stay friends too long with unsupportive people because we have a history together and it is a loyalty to this history of friendship and the past memories that anesthetizes us to the present day hurtfulness. So we take it and take it and take it all in the name of "friendship". The question is why should we take it, and why is it so hard for most people to extract themselves from such unsupportive friendships. What to do with the frienemies among us.

When Youth Supports An Elder

I saw something very important this week that I hope is a sign of an increasing trend. For those of you who are not followers of popular culture, last night was a huge event for a large group of television fans--- Betty White hosted Saturday Night Live. Betty White has been around for eighty-eight (and one half ) years as an actress most famous for her roles on the Mary Tyler Moore show in the 70's and The Golden Girls in the 80's. Why am I writing about this on my blog, stick with me for a minute because I think the event signals something important.

The back story is that Betty made a hilarious commercial that played during the Super Bowl this year and all the twenty-somethings loved it. They loved it so much they opened a facebook page and started a campaign to get her on as a host of Saturday Night Live---the twenty-somethings show of shows so to speak. They got so many people to join the campaign that she was asked to host three months later. My own peers called me before the show to ask me to tape it so they could watch it again if they wanted. They were already anticipating a second viewing before they saw it the first time. What is going on here?

While I was watching it I saw that at least seven former SNL female members came back to be in several sketches with her exciting the audience (and I am sure the shows writers) and ensuring a "Best of SNL" title for the entire show. Remember, these former SNL players all came back for this one show, and that has never happened for anyone before her. That is when it hit me: Youth is supporting an elder. Youth liked her in the commercial, youth got their show to make her host and youth came back to the show to support and boost her skits. It also marked Betty as he oldest guest to ever host the show, and gave SNL it best rated show in eighteen months. While being an exciting event for the show's faithful, it may also be a sign of something bigger---a positive step toward bridging youth and eldership

In the traditional native cultures eldership begins with early elders (60's) and moves to middle elders (70's) and finally to the revered position of full elder (80's on). These elders are revered and honored for their wisdom in these cultures and it is not uncommon for older people from these traditions to brag that they are "almost 80". Our culture, on the other hand, often finds these people abandoned in nursing homes. So what made our culture's youth pluck this one elder, Betty White, to become an icon of their generation? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because it happened and that is all that is important. When the relationship between youth and elders is strengthened in any way, our culture matures and that is worth noting. Every positive act of support of youth to elders, especially such a public one, changes our culture's negative stereotypes of older people being feeble and useless and upholds the truly dignified nature of our elders. Youth feeds elders with energy and enthusiasm and elders give experience and wisdom. This of course does not mean that all elders in this culture are automatically wise as wisdom is rarely sought after or valued by most members of our culture, but every act of mutual support strengthens the connection between the generations. Whether it is simply a shared laugh or a deep conversation, all connections that deepen relations between youth and eldership benefit our entire society.