The thing was, I never knew that I actually had choices in life. My older brothers all went to university. I thought everyone went to university. I was so surprised when my father informed me that I didn't have to go into sciences if I didn't want to. I then suddenly switched from sciences to arts, but I had no idea what I was to do with my life. And then two of my older brothers went through law school and became lawyers. It became assumed by my family that I would naturally follow their path. I took the LSAT but didn't come close to what my brothers scored when they took it. Consequently, though I submitted the expected application to law school, I was fairly certain I would not be accepted.
When I started considering my options, I finally admitted that I felt incredibly drawn to acting. I was also attracted to writing, but a few choice comments made innocently by my father had squelched any confidence I might have had about my writing. But acting . . . it was something I thoroughly enjoyed and even proved to have some talent for. I applied and was accepted to a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting program at my university. One month later, I received a call from the admissions secretary for the law school that I'd applied to, saying I'd been accepted.
Naturally, thinking only of how happy it would make my father and brothers (my mother had died by this point), I dropped out of the theater program and took my seat in law school. I made it through and got my law degree but was then convinced by my older brothers to take the next step, namely take the bar exams. “Once you're a lawyer, they can never take that away from you,” they said. My father impressed upon me that at least I would have something to fall back on. When I completed my training, passed the bar exams, and became a lawyer, I still felt that I was meant to take a different path.
I was all set to audition for the acting program again, but then I was set up on a blind date by one of my older lawyer brothers. Rather rashly, I became infatuated with my date and then allowed myself to be convinced by my new girlfriend that she would not be willing to wait for me to establish myself as an actor. She loved material things, and that need had to be fed. I abandoned my dream and accepted a life as a lawyer.
Though my heart wasn't in it, I would have to say I was a fairly decent lawyer. I rationalized my choice to work in small law firms as opposed to the huge wealthy law firms my brothers worked in. I even set up my own law practice. All the while, I started to die inside. It got to where I knew I had only a few short months left to live, so I discovered I had a backbone and that I could choose what I wanted out of life. I got divorced, closed my law practice, and embarked on a path to become a professional actor.
Do I feel that I have failed to meet expectations, or that I have met them (just), or that I exceeded expectations? Quite frankly, I don't care. I feel I am in the right place, doing what feels right for me. My lawyer older brothers make as much in one billable hour as I do in a typical month. I don't own a house anymore, I paid a huge financial penalty for closing my practice, and I now live in a subsidized apartment just getting by. But if I had remained a lawyer making lots of money, I would have been dead a decade ago. I don't feel I need to prove anything to anyone at this point.
The challenges that smart people face when it comes to finding meaningful employment, surviving dull, routine work, avoiding a lifetime in a claustrophobic corner of a profession, choosing between work that pays and work that interests them, and generally adapting their smarts to the contours of society's configurations are worth a book in themselves. You may prove one of the lucky ones and make a beautiful match. More likely, however, you will find yourself among the majority of smart people who perennially find the world of work to be a problem.
CHAPTER QUESTIONS
1 Can work ever feel meaningful? If so, what do you suspect are the necessary conditions for work to provoke the psychological experience of meaning?
2 What work have you found meaningful?
3 Since much work in the service of meaning, like licking envelopes for a good cause, does not itself feel meaningful, how do you intend to treat boring work accomplished in the service of meaning?
4 What new work might constitute a meaning opportunity?
5 What loves from your childhood might be turned into contemporary meaningful work?
3
ORIGINAL, FORMED, AND AVAILABLE PERSONALITIES
Each of us comes into the world with a unique mix of aptitudes, characteristics, inclinations, genetic information, aspects of temperament, and other qualities and capacities that in natural psychology we call “original personality.” You are not born a blank slate; no parent believes that nor does anyone who has seen a litter of kittens. Your original personality includes everything from your native intelligence to your basic mood structure and all those aspects of temperament (like adaptability, sensitivity, and distractibility) that developmental psychologists study.
There was a time when people thought that fully a quarter of the human race was born melancholic. It is not unreasonable to suppose that people are born happier or sadder, just as they are born smarter or less smart. Likewise, it is reasonable to suppose that each individual is already born with a certain worldview—or primed for a certain worldview. Probably we are born with sets of both qualities and capacities and also with a unique blueprint—one that may haunt us as a ghostly memory if and when life deflects us from who we might have been or who we ought to have been.
There is nothing surprising about the idea that we are born with an original personality. What is surprising is that, except for a very limited exploration of that cluster of traits known in psychology as temperament—an exploration that, by the way, the helping side of psychology makes almost no use of—all psychologies have avoided thinking about original personality. Psychology does not credit human beings with an original personality or take it into account when psychologists diagnose and treat their clients or patients. Doesn't it matter whether or not the person across from you came into the world already naturally sad if you are going to pin on him the label of clinically depressed? Of course it does.
Picture a litter of kittens. One is more curious than the next. One is more aggressive than the next. One is a leader, and another is a follower. The first is not potentially curious; she is already curious. The second is not potentially aggressive; he is already aggressive. The third and the fourth are not potentially leaders and followers; they are already that. In exactly the same way a human infant is not potentially smart; he is already smart. True, he doesn't have language yet; true, his environment can dumb him down; true, he can't write War and Peace or solve quadratic equations. But he is already built a certain way and already looks out at life with a particular mind-set and apparatus.
A smart person is smart right from the beginning.
Then comes the environment. The child looks out at the world with his original personality, interacts with the world according to his original personality, and has his developmental blueprint altered by the world, producing his formed personality. He forms or doesn't form secure attachments, his world is safer or more dangerous, he sees an array of options or few options, and so on. To take a simple analogy, our curious kitten in a loving household becomes a gentle cat but if thrown out into the world, becomes feral. Her curiosity manifests one way in that loving home and another way if she must fend for herself in back alleys. In one environment, it keeps her amused; in another, it helps her kill.
To say this simply, a person's original personality is altered into his formed personality through the circumstances of living. This complex alteration may produce a weakened or a strengthened person, a smarter or a less smart person, an open or a defended person, and so on. Your formed personality may be more than as well as less than your original personality, or more in some regards and less in others. Maybe you were born