Say “Yes”
After college graduation promise me that, for the love of Zeus and all that is good, you will say “yes.”
When you get the dream job offer you have always wanted except it is in Louisiana, take it.
If you get a good job offer in an industry you have no interest in, take it.
If you get offered a job that you think you may not have the skills for or that is challenging or that is scary or involves intimidating unknowns, take it.
I am telling you, Life does not owe you anything. When She extends her cold and unforgiving hand towards you and places in your palm an opportunity, accept the offer without hesitation.
If you turn down a job only because it is not located where you grew up or it is far away from your girlfriend or it is not exactly what you had in mind for your first job, you will quickly realize:
- Your hometown isn’t as great as you remember it being
- Your girlfriend isn’t who you want to spend your life with, and
- You actually don’t have any idea what you want your first job to be.
But by the time you realize all of this, it will be too late. The opportunity will have passed.
You will end up staying in your hometown, wishing you were elsewhere, without the boy or girl and the job.
And so it goes. Life owes you nothing. Life will walk right past you with indifference as She has a million others a million times before. Many people sit passively beside the road to Opportunity and wait for Life to offer them the perfect, safe, comfortable opportunity of their dreams. And in response, Life gives them the middle finger and spits in their direction.
Only when you turn your nose up at Life’s extended hand will you realize you didn’t know what that “perfect” opportunity would even look like if it had been offered for you. And even later in life you realize that, more often than not, the perfect opportunity comes disguised as an imperfect one.
So when you get the chance, early in your career, say “yes.” Take the almost perfect job or the big unknown or the I-don’t-know-if-I-can-handle-this job. Take the risk. Place the weight of your fear and anxiety and nervousness on your back, and step forward. Allow that weight to make you stronger, to build you up, and, ultimately, to change you.
Under the weight of responsibility and anxiety and fear your legs will burn. You will tire. Your back will ache. Tears will form in the corner of your eyes. You will contemplate how to pass the weight to someone else. I am still young you will think, I don’t need to take on this weight so early. I think I should wait until later in life to truly bear the weight of responsibility.
Ignore yourself. This is your Freudian Ego talking. And your ego only focuses on shallow and immediate pleasure, uninterested in the long term benefits that come with doing difficult things.
Beware: unchallenged, your ego will leave you in your parents basement playing video games with no autonomy, no self-worth and no self-esteem.
You must push through fear. You must push through doubt. And with time, your legs and back will grow stronger. They will no longer ache. Eventually, baring your weight, you will stand up straight. You will wear the weight with pride and not anguish.
And eventually, contradicting everything you have previously thought, the lightness of your responsibility will quickly bore you. You will crave more weight.
Arthur Schopenhauer describes exactly this (albeit bleakly), writing that life is simply the oscillation between suffering and boredom:
“…man is a compound of needs and necessities hard to satisfy; and that even when they are satisfied, all he obtains is a state of painlessness, where nothing remains to him but abandonment to boredom…as it is, we take no delight in existence except when we are struggling for something; and then distance and difficulties to be overcome make our goal look as though it would satisfy us — an illusion which vanishes when we reach it…”
Taking the imperfect opportunity and overcoming the challenges it presents — even if, as Schopenhauer describes, doing so leaves you bored and looking for further goals and challenges to conquer — moves and changes you. Facing down a challenge instills in you value discernible to yourself and others.
Achieving an engaged life is simple: add weight, feel burdened, grow stronger, stand up straight, and then seek more weight. And so the process of life goes, from suffering to accomplishment to boredom to more weight and more suffering to more accomplishment.
Whether or not this leads to ultimate happiness can be left for another discussion. But if you do not bear the weight of your current opportunities while also seeking further challenges, you will become lethargic. You will become static. Over time, even as your eyes begin to show wrinkles, you will remain a 22-year old inside. You will be weak, uninteresting, and simple.
Seek out weight to bear. As George Horace Lorimer writes in “Letters from A Self-Made Merchant to His Son”:
“…The fellow who’s got the right stuff in him is holding down his own place with one hand and begging to reach for the job just ahead of him with the other…”
All aspects of life are this way. We bear one weight while seeking the next.
Perhaps life is only suffering, but there is no doubt that choosing to bear weight — and choosing what weights you bear — is a different type of suffering than the weight chosen and placed on your back against your will.
Do not seek comfort. Comfort is boredom, and boredom is purposeless suffering.
Engagement and satisfaction in life comes only from the process of struggle. Children do not build a fort to play in a fort — they build a fort to build a fort. The fun is the process, the challenge, the suffering, the pain, the hurt, and the eventual accomplishment which earns you the autonomy to choose your own weight to bear again.
Say “yes” to the challenging job in the unfamiliar location in the new industry. There is no dream job on the way. When you receive an opportunity, seize it and accept the weight you must bear with it.
Because the richness of life does not come in not bearing any weight. It comes through choosing the weight which we bear.
Got a hankering for more? You can read more of my posts on Letters to a Young Professional, you can check out my blog 12HourDifference.co for my thoughts on launching an international career and you can connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter to chat about…whatever you’d like!
