What Now? A Moment of Clarity.

So I’m sure like me, a lot of you are asking this question. What now? What do I do now? Where do I go from here? But I guess one of the bigger issues I have is not necesarily not having a current job, but wondering what do I say when people ask “And what do you do?” I could run down a very long list of things I do, hobbies I have, places I go, people I spend time with, but it seems the only correct answer to this question is giving one’s vocation. As if one’s career choice is what defines them, like by me telling you what I do to make money is an all encompassing answer as to who I am. I hate when people ask that question. I hated it when I still had a job. Maybe this whole process that we Americans are going through is exactly what we, as human beings, need to go through in order to open our eyes to the ridiculous little packages we have placed ourselves and each other in. You know what I am talking about. Whe you meet someone and as them what it is they do perhaps they say “mechanic” you put them in the “mechanic box” not a whole lot of pretty wrapping paper and ribbon, just a small plain box. When you ask the next person what they do and they say “lawyer” the package just got pretty. A “lawyer box” probably has really nice paper, expensive ribbon, etc because you think what is inside is more valuable. You know you do it. We all do it. The funny thing about today though is that all of the packages are starting to look the same, in fact some of the less attractive packages are starting to look better, and to a lot of people who used to be in the pretty paper, expensive ribbon boxes, the plain brown wrapped boxes are looking pretty darn good. This is where we are going to learn not to let our careers define us. Not to put people in different categories, or look at someone like they have less to offer because you feel their career path is not up to par. Right now, it does not seem to matter a whole lot. We are starting to realize that what we have worked for since highschool, college, grad school, etc can be ripped away at a moments notice and there better be something else underneath. You had better been working on yourself some, and making lasting relationships, and defining yourself through who you truly are and not by what merely pays your bills. The people that I see today that are not panicking, even though they have potentially lost everything, are the prople who have spent a lot of time nurturing themselves and those around them. They have a peace because they already know what most people fail to realize, and that is I am not my job, I am not my car, I am not my big beautiful house, I am an amazing, interesting, strong individual who has given of myself to others and the only really true good investments are in people. Im not saying being destitute is the goal here. Of course there are basic necessities that have to be met in order to properly function, and for those that have lost homes my heart goes out to them. Yes this is a mess, yes people have lost what they have worked their whole lives for, but here’s the silver lining; You can make it happen again. Surely not everyone will be able to recover to the same extent that they were living, but they will reprioritize, and all of a sudden that second car is not a “necesity”, that yearly trip to Disney World? Dont really need it. We have spent billions on things to make our life better, easier, and where has it gotten us? We will start to enjoy the little things again. We will start to create again. Some of us will find things we never realized we would love because we were too busy making money to buy “stuff”. We will love stronger, and we will judge less. I am hoping that on the other side of this mountain of a mess, is a new USA, that will not again take for granted what it has and what it can be. -TP