Of Mice and Men
Or, the relentless pursuit of happiness and purpose.
It’s been some days since I’m battling with a small deer mouse in my home. Also, with the thought of a complete career change.
“No one cares!”, shouted the guy from the background. Are you talking about the mouse story, or the career change? Since I can’t know, I’ll go on.
The mouse was brought here by Oscar. Oscar is my cat. One of my two cats. The other one, Ziggy, understands me and Silvia, my wife, don’t eat animals, and doesn’t bring us prey but small leaves and berries.
Now, those of you that kinda know me in real life will know that I don’t eat animals, and that I have a fucking amazing job. This brings us to the two issues at hand. One — I won’t eat your mouse present, Oscar; and two- do you think I’m an idiot because I won’t eat the mouse, or because I want to quit my job for a career change?
While I donned my mouse gloves (heavy-duty gardening gloves I use for the purpose of catching and relocating the small preys Oscar brings safely out of his reach, sometimes wearing them while being completely naked at 3am, but that’s another story), and tried to catch the mouse, I weighted the opportunity that life has put in front of me — the opportunity to try my hand at my dream job, which can be summed up as being paid to make up stuff. That’s the official definition of “writer”. Look it up.
Now, maybe because I was distracted with that thought, the mouse managed to run away from me, jumped swiftly into an IKEA rattan container, the ones with two holes you put in the Kallax thingy or whatchacallit, got out from the other side, squeezed himself between the furniture and the wall, and then — miraculously! — found a hole in the floor, and jumped in it.
(we’re renovating our home. It’s a 1939 old Irish house, and we removed the carpet that was everywhere — everywhere, including the bathrooms!-to discover these wonderful floorboards that have been butchered in places to allow for heating pipes to come in. So while I find the time to refurb the floor, accidents like this might happen)
“Damn”, I thought. Mostly because I haven’t signed any contract for the project that might allow me to switch careers without too many economical troubles, making the whole decision resting on trust and faith.
And also because now it would be a fucking nightmare to catch the little mouse.
My wife saw me lost in thoughts while we went to buy the catch-and-release traps. She almost cried when she saw that they still sell the spring-activated traps, like in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. We got our traps, and then she asked me what was wrong. And I told her — nothing, just waiting for these damn contracts to come in, so at least my jumping from the safety of my well-paid, soul-crushing, you-arent-poor-anymore job —
— digression: I was poor. I joke that my family was the last proletariat family in the civilised world. And when I was living alone in the north of Italy, in an illegal room-apartment which was as big as a shoebox, I sometimes had to go to the food bank to just get to the next pay check without starving. I had to steal clothes from a big shop so I could go and have that interview. I wasn’t poor because I used drugs or was an alcoholic or got myself into weird situations — I was poor because the system is designed NOT to take care of people in times of need. I didn’t talk often about my economical condition, cause I was ashamed, but the main reason I am scared to make the jump now is that I still have the memories of being poor, and it sucks. End of digression —
— I was saying, before I got interrupted by myself, that I was anxious to get a black-on-white confirmation, so that “the jump” would be less scary.
Anyway. What she said was the same thing she told me 13 years ago when I was stuck in another job, scared that I wouldn’t be able to work abroad as I was dreaming of. She said, “just do it”.
(Nike marketing team, contact me for the advertising fee)
So here we are, mouse traps in hand, Silvia telling me to “just do it”. Alan Watts has something to say about it too (I’ll paraphrase cause it’s long, but will add the link to the speech):
“What would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life?”
Well, it’s so amazing as a result of our kind of educational system, crowds of students say well, we’d like to be painters, we’d like to be poets, we’d like to be writers, but as everybody knows you can’t earn any money that way.
When we finally got down to something, which the individual says he really wants to do, I will say to him, you do that and forget the money, because, if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time.
It’s absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don’t like, in order to go on spending things you don’t like, doing things you don’t like and to teach our children to follow in the same track.
https://genius.com/Alan-watts-what-if-money-was-no-object-annotated
(I suggest you go and actually search for the speech on YouTube. We’re so lucky to have the recordings of his words)
While Alan’s speech didn’t soothe any of my fears, it did ignite a desire for freedom. Freedom to pursue my dreams. Freedom to do the things I love. I have a great job, but it’s also very demanding, and very time-constraining, and for the past three years, I felt the struggle of having to wake up at 5 or write long into the night to pursue my life calling.
Jung says that a man’s life is divided in two — before his forties, and after it. Dante places this mid-life at 35, but regardless of which one you pick, I’m in the second part — the part where you answer your call.
While musing about Jung, Dante, and Alan Watts, I went home, put some peanut butter in the trap, set it along the edge of the wall, and went on about my day.
Twenty minutes later, I went into the room where the mouse jumped, and lo and behold, the trap was sprung! I carefully got it — yeah, it feels heavier — and carefully brought it outside, to open it, and finally release the poor little thing.
I opened the trap — and it was empty.
(Dario is an Italian-Irish writer, actor, and movie director. Connect with me at dariocannizzaro.com)
