Two Dilemmas
Unemployment is a fascinating situation. So far I’ve discovered two really interesting dilemmas:
1. Progress through useless activity
Any job-search action I take has a very low probability of success and no guarantee of any usefulness, at maximum. Finding a job listing, sending in a resume or making contact with an interesting local resident may be the thing that gets me a job, but 999 times out of 1000, it’s not. Since each individual step seems so unlikely it registers psychologically as useless, there’s little motivation to take the steps. But if I refuse to take the steps because each one provides (nearly) zero results for non-zero effort, I will never find success. So basically the goal here is to keep doing things that feel useless, constantly. Very intriguing.
2. The genuineness dilemma
I think my biggest asset is that I’m naively, almost startlingly non-mercenary. I am quite specifically here to serve the people of Baltimore, just because Jesus loves them and I consider them valuable. It’s what I care about and currently my deepest measure of personal success.
So I’ll go to fairly significant expense and effort just to find ways I can help people, then help them in those ways. I could be a secretary, mop floors as a janitor, head up of a non-profit or stay unemployed and take people out for coffee, and I’ll be largely content and purposeful in any of those cases.
Content minus the fact that I’m not providing for my family, of course, and that’s an important pressure. Because the pressure to provide means that I want to get a job, and wanting to get a job means I’ll start turning whatever assets I have to influence people to want to hire me, which means that I’ll start being genuine and non-mercenary with an ulterior motive, which, we sadly conclude, is no longer non-mercenary, and is therefore no longer an asset.
So essentially my goal is to stay true, stay joyful, keep my value and purpose centered on Jesus, trust him to provide employment and/or money as the (true) need arises, and in the meantime keep doing important, useless things.
