What's Life About, Anyway?

My guy often bemoans the fact that when he gets together with his family (every holiday - his mom likes holidays) they seldom talk about things that, in his words, mean something. Big questions, things like what life means, what they honestly think, what ticks them off or delights them in a cosmic sense.

We all get trapped in that mundane conversation sometimes; it's safe. It's unlikely to lead to choppy waters if you stay in the shallows talking about traffic on the highway this morning. And it's deadening.

My daughter was visiting this week and I am happy to say we seldom get stuck in the shallows. She's 21, that age where all the questions are big and the answers are murky. This time her dilemma was one that got me thinking, too. It mirrors my own questions. I bet you've thought about it, too, if you're at all out of step with mainstream culture.

"Should I be planning for a career," she wondered, "or should I be planning for a future that interests me?"

Now don't bother objecting that those don't have to be mutually exclusive; we know. The problem is that for a person who apparently should have been born in the sixties, the professions of today hold little appeal. Lawyer? Economist? Doctor? Teacher? Politician? She sees their value but also sees them as intrinsic parts of a system that she thinks is inherently wrong; a system that holds profitability as its highest value.

She is considering the growing field of sustainability, a place where she sees a possibility of doing work she finds interesting as well as making a positive impact.

But here's the basic problem as she explained it: Do you pursue a career to make money, have a nice place to live and a nice car and spend your life working to hang on to them, or do you create a life that needs little and allows you to breathe, to enjoy the hours of your day and pursue your interests? Do you work in an office and make the big bucks, or do you live on an organic farm commune and dig in the dirt for your keep?

She tells me the organic farm idea is catching on with some kids- it even has an acronym: WOOF. Work On an Organic Farm.

Can you blame them? The job market is atrocious - I listened to an NPR interview with Georgetown law graduates who took on massive student loans anticipating six figure jobs when they graduated. They can't find any. And they think they probably won't; when the economy recovers, the big firms will hire students in that year's graduating class, students who intern with them and who they can train from the start.

So here's my daughter, midway through college, intelligent, idealistic and considering a completely alternative lifestyle. Part of it is the influence of friends, of course, but part of it is something that resonates with her. How do I know? It strikes me, too.

And here's where it gets a bit rattling. I spent my life managing to stay on the fringe of the system; I was a journalist, a teacher, a mom. I was connected, but I never worked in places where I felt immersed in the corporate world. I do now.

I get up early every day, slip into my torturous but very attractive high heels, grab my jacket, slip on my security pass, throw my blackberry into my briefcase and commute to a very nice high rise office where I have a lovely office. I sometimes have to go to New York City and go to our sister office on an upper floor of a very tall building. I am up to my neck in the corporate world.

It's not bad. It's different. The people are great, there's a work ethic and a commitment to doing a good job that I admire. But there are very clear, unwritten laws. Thou shalt not submit anything that has not been edited by at least two other people. Thou shalt maintain a paper trail. Thou shalt always consider any new idea from a dozen angles and vet it through at least that many people. Once part of the system, there is a heavy pressure to not rock the boat, to do a good job without making big waves.

I can understand why. Yet it also stifles creativity. I've heard management almost beg employees for ideas, yet no one wants to stick their neck out and offer one.

And is this where I belong? I rationalize, telling myself that I have spent a lifetime skating across systems that swallow other people, and this is just an interesting and very useful experience that suits my purposes for the moment. I'm still working on radio as well, I'm still writing a book. Who knows what happens once the kids are out of college?

Yet it makes me think about my daughter's question. What's life about? Jobs like mine are about security, making enough money to cover whatever bills exist. Security is a good thing, but it doesn't seem compatible with a life that's full, that's challenging, that's interesting.

And damn it, I demand that of my life. Apparently that's a gene you can pass on to your kids.

Deep Thoughts at the Diner

We found ourselves having dinner at the local diner tonight, my guy and our friend the sensitive musician. We were celebrating a little; my guy's new songs are nearly ready for airplay and the local radio station loved it - it'll get airplay. Our friend's newest CD is done after five long and eventful years and he's rightfully very proud of it. I just got through another week. That's cause for celebration in my mind.

I love diners. I like the old, no frills, no space, no privacy diners the best, the ones that are mostly counter with a grill on the opposite side beside the coffee pot. It's genetic, I think. My father's entire family are diner devotees. Not only did we love to eat breakfast out, but on hot summer nights when the whole family was squeezed into the little Victorian house in the hills, we'd all pile into cars and go to the local diner for a piece of pie and a cup of coffee after dinner.

Diners, therefore, would make sense as a celebratory destination, just in case you're surprised we didn't go out for some gourmet extravaganza.

Plus you can get breakfast all day long. So while KB got a hot turkey sandwich with gravy and mashed potatoes and our friend got a turkey club, I got a Spanish omelette.

Then we started talking about the state of the world. Our friend's noticed an increased sense of desperation, of depression. In his latest visit to New York City, he said budget cuts have forced people to wait ten or fifteen minutes for trains and buses, increasing concerns about their safety. He saw garbage piling up on the sidewalks. He saw an elderly man riding the bus into Manhattan early in the morning. He was standing; no one offered him a seat. And our friend wondered - where was he going? To a doctor's appointment? To see a friend? To work?

We talked about the violence we see on the news. I was stunned to see a policeman beating a student who was protesting rising college tuition in California. Our friend said a photo essay he saw featured the same theme around the world: police holding back crowds. Whether they were protesters in California, hungry people in Haiti, looters in Chile, the theme was the same.

My guy takes what, on the face of it, seems to be a bleak view of it all. This is the way the world has always been, he argues. We don't seem to learn. We fight and we compete and we kill for our own interests. Human selfishness has destroyed civilizations and it may kill us all.

Our friend and I slowly sank into the floor.

"But don't see it as depressing," my guy continued. "Imagine that this existence is just a small part of your overall existence...and maybe you decided that for your best development you needed to learn about fear. What better place than this? What better time than now? And all you can do is change yourself, change the way you react to this ball of fear. Each of us can change, and that can change everything."

We were sitting a little straighter again when I saw something that made me smile.

The table near us had been surrounded by five teenagers. I'd watched a very thin girl ignore her plate of spaghetti, then twirl it around, then methodically cut the entire portion into five sections. She never ate any. It hadn't improved my mood.

But after they left, the bus boy went to the table to clean up. He bent over and picked up a dollar bill that had fallen beneath a chair. Without hesitation, he put the dollar with the pile of singles that had been left as a tip for the waitress.

So shines a good deed in a weary world.

It's Good To Get Out

I had to get out of the office all of yesterday and part of today to do some research for work, and it had unexpected benefits.

If I spend enough time working on my own, doing the same job day after day, I get smaller. Is it just me? My confidence erodes, my secret belief that my mom was right and I really am something special disintegrates, colors wash out, my spark contracts to a tiny, desperate click.

I see no reason for it; I've got a good life, I'm loved and I love, there are plenty of things to worry about but none of them are truly threatening. I can roll with them. Yet I feel less and less able to meet life's challenges the longer I play hermit. My job, because of time constraints, restricts me to interaction by telephone.

I re-energize after a day of productive work with people I find interesting. I'm not looking for new friends, I'm not sucking anyone's optimism. I just find that when my brain is engaged and I'm dealing with people, organizing a full day and creating a plan to create a project, it requires me to perk up on many levels and that effort makes a change in not only how I feel, but what I think.

After a good couple of days of interesting work that got me firing on all cylinders, I was more calm, more rational, more able to see problems from a higher viewpoint, and much, much more sure of my own ability to not only cope, but thrive.

So what is that all about? I at first wondered if it was simply the stimulus of other people, but I think it's more. I think it's about the kind of work I like to do.

I'm curious about a lot of things and I'm interested. Being a journalist is a good fit with those traits. But routine stifles me and feeling trapped by that routine is slow death by asphyxiation.

Are there really people who don't mind inescapable routine? I can't imagine it, unless it gives some people a sense of safety that makes it feel like the only option. I think if I had to work day after day in a windowless cubicle I would be dead in a year. I've worked in big offices; I even once temped in a major corporation's accounting office. I watched the world shrink to the size of a small conference room with a row of ten key calculators. But what if we want more from our lives?

Have we established a working culture where most of us are dying a slow psychic death in an effort to pay our bills? If so, we're doing it wrong.

My back's a mess and I probably can't split wood anymore. Is it too late for me to move off the grid?