The other day I was shuffling through some old papers, things I’d written in a different time, in a time when jobs were plentiful. Wow! How things have changed! Reading what I’d written, I could easily recall the perception of plenty that surrounded me at the time I wrote it. I recalled how permanent that plenty seemed to be. There was little gratitude in what I’d written, though I’d written it as a cautionary tale, as a hint that it might be a good idea, when choosing a profession in which about one-third of one’s waking life would be spent, to choose well. Today, choosing seems a luxury.
Behind the windows
peered my reflection:
a sleepy morning person
running to catch my train,
off to spend my time in
miserable disdain ~
to a place I don’t want to be;
but, I wish it away
in vain, as I find myself
deboarding, then
catching another train.
The tracks click under my seat,
carrying other people like me
to the bus~
the morning people,
most of us:
wondering if it’s worth all of this:
but, still I find myself
deboarding the bus,
minding my head
that tells me: I must.
Perhaps the cautionary notion of choosing a career well remains a valid one. But, I realized how impermanent anything really is, only after going back and pondering the way it once was, the way it once seemed it would always be. It’s a good thing, to reflect back once in a while; it helps give us a clearer perspective on the present. The point is not to remain stuck in the past, but to remind us that we have changed, how we have changed, and what got us to where we are now. Then we can move forward, a bit wiser, and perhaps with a bit more gratitude.
Jobs are not plentiful today. A great many people sit at their dinner tables with their families, more likely eating a meal of green beans and boxed mac and cheese than steak, and maybe skipping breakfast or lunch to save the money. Those people would be happy to have a job, even one they didn’t particularly like. Sometimes being happy with what one is doing, isn’t the point. Sometimes just surviving is the point. And that’s where a good many of us are today. Things have definitely changed.
©Janet Mitchell, 2011
