here's some ungodly navel-gazing for ya

One of my most trusted mentors asked of me a few years ago, during my second year of teaching, “Please, don’t leave teaching.”  He told me I was good at it, and that it would be a real shame if I walked away.  He meant it as a compliment, I think, but also as a request for political solidarity.  “There’s more glory elsewhere,” is what I heard, “but this shit matters.”  He knew that I was thinking about leaving teaching after my second or third year to pursue a PhD.

Last week, we got together, and I told him what’s been going on with me.  That I’ve been almost unbearably depressed.  That I hate it in the Bay Area.  That I basically quit my job mid-year.  Rightly, he responded, “Holy shit!” But then he told me that he hates his job every day, that he only has a few years until he can retire, but that he doesn’t know that he can handle it for that much longer.  He told me he doesn’t believe in our work anymore.

Neither do I.  Neither do I!

I felt like I was given permission that I didn’t know I wanted.

We talked about what he’s been working on, the shit he’s been getting from the top.  I told him, and I meant it, that he sounded like a badass.  But I also believed him that he fucking hates it.

Is being that (this) unhappy reason enough to abandon the work?

A couple of weeks ago, I read Man’s Search for Meaning.  Victor Frankl, a psychologist and a Holocaust survivor, asserts that people are not driven by a desire for pleasure but by a desire for purpose, for meaning.  He explains, "We can discover… meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering" (111).  So, basically, we’re searching for work that matters, relationships that matter, or suffering that matters.

I’ve spent most of my adult life in pursuit of work that I used to think mattered.  But I don’t anymore.  I hate it.  I have felt like I’m a cog in the machinery of the school-to-prison pipeline.  And it’s been hard to get out of bed in the morning.  So I don’t have work, and since I don’t know anyone here really, I don’t have relationships.  (Though I do have the.best.friends.and.family.ever. at home.)  I am suffering, though I’m hesitant to admit that.

On suffering, Frankl says: 

But let me make it perfectly clear that in no way is suffering necessary to find meaning.  I only insist that meaning is possible in spite of suffering – provided, certainly, that the suffering is unavoidable.  If it were avoidable, however, the meaningful thing to do would be to remove its cause, be it psychological, biological, or political.  To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic. (113)

But:

Another trusted mentor told me about a talk she saw at a conference a few years ago where the presenter talked about “white paralysis.”  She described it as an aspect of white privilege experienced by White anti-racist activists who get tired of despair and decide to take a break.  “Self-care.”  “Do what makes you happy.”  People of Color don’t have the liberty of walking away from the fight, but White folks do. 

I also recently read Mandela’s autobiography.  I appreciated, and am deeply challenged by, the ambivalence about his own work that he is so honest about:

In life, every man* has twin obligations – obligations to his family, to his parents, to his wife and children; and he has an obligation to his people, his community, his country.  In a civil and humane society, each man is able to fulfill those obligations according to his own inclinations and abilities.  But in a country like South Africa, it was almost impossible for a man of my birth and color to fulfill both of those obligations.  In South Africa, a man of color who attempted to live as a human being was punished and isolated. In South Africa, a man who tried to fulfill his duty to his people was inevitably ripped from his family and his home and was forced to live a life apart, a twilight existence of secrecy and rebellion. I did not in the beginning choose to place my people above my family, but in attempting to serve my people, I found that I was prevented from fulfilling my obligations as a son, a brother, a father, and a husband.

In that way, my commitment to my people, to the millions of South Africans I would never know or meet, was at the expense of the people I knew best and loved most.  It was as simple and yet as incomprehensible as the moment a small child asks her father, “Why can you not be with us?” And the father must utter the terrible words: “There are other children like you, a great many of them…”  and then one’s voice trails off. (623)

*Reading man this and man that!  What has become of me!?

Yesterday, no shit, I applied for a job as a stylist at David’s Bridal.  I think that sounds so fun.  And I could continue my work at the prison, and the other volunteer things that I’ve been lining up, on my own time.  Because when I come home from work, I would really be home from work. 

I also think it’s a total fucking cop-out.  Me choosing fun! over work that matters.

I don’t know.  If Mandela couldn’t have the work and happiness, what makes me think I can?  I need to read some more.  I ordered this and this.