I graduated college in May of 2008, walking out of academia in a black Chinese-made robe befitting of an executioner into an economy and s society catching the first whiffs of the miasmatic decay created by our materialism. I decided to spend another summer fighting forest fires and save money for what could be a long winter. I worked 112 hours running a chainsaw on a good week, spending most of the summer in Northern California’s timber stands. I finished the season in September and moved back to Chicago right as Lehman Brothers collapsed; the first limb shed from the leprous system. Chicago had a ‘good job market’ and it was time for me to seek out a Sisyphean task that would bestow me with a stainless steel refrigerator, George Foreman Grills (yes, plural), a waffle maker, low slung Japanese chic memory foam orthopedic bed, and the slimmest profile television available as the centerpiece my loft in a district where meat used to be packed. In essence, all that I was promised and deserved after years of studying. I lackadaisically applied for quite a few jobs as I watched and read about the hornswoggling, the avarice, the delusion, the Ponzi schemes, the fraud, the losses, the prospects of retirement evaporating for millions; It was like watching 300 million people find out that Santa isn’t real. Fighting a forest fire has a clear cut purpose, something that could not be further from the idea of bundling something, derivatizing it, rating it as quality since you don’t really understand what it is and then selling it to people who don’t understand what you are selling either. But everyone is going to earn a lot of money, right? Right. Nobody loses? Nobody. I was appalled and stressed about my future, until Chase Bank offered me a job interview. I was going to get a low level position in the orgy!
I was going to get rich, if only I could figure out how to convince myself and these people that I would be good at doing something that I had zero interest in doing. If I got rich then in quite a few years I could possibly do something that I would enjoy; it is just like indentured servitude, it wouldn’t be that bad. I began sweating as soon as I received the phone call as my mind frantically searched for a way to lie to myself and everyone else. If I could pull it off, I would be perfect to work in finance. I entered the office, shorn of my beard and wearing a suit; the lie started there. Four pale faces sat behind a desk, some sort of panel of midlevel managers from far-flung, forsaken branches of the bank in the Chicago suburbs. They were still doing the indentured servitude portion of their career from what I could gather. We cover the formalities; I kept a copy of my resume on my lap to make sure that my words corroborate with the carefully tailored distortions written in sexless, sleek Arial Narrow. I worried that I might lose control of my hands and watch them float away or that my face would tire from smiling incessantly, but neither came to pass. I sat thinking about how I should have drank either more or less coffee, until it became apparent that merely handing them my resume was insufficient to get me a piece of the sweet apple pie that is America. They wanted me to do some role playing, but I was already role playing. You can see how this might become confusing.
‘Okay. Let’s pretend that I am a bank customer who simply wants to make a deposit. You will be my teller. Your goal is to convince me to refinance and move my mortgage to Chase Bank.’ She actually pretended to be driving a car, her hands rotating the steering wheel to pull up to a hypothetical air tube and speaker through which we would communicate. I am not sure if her feet were doing the pedals as they were under the desk and I could not seem them.
‘Hello, I would like to make a deposit. Could I have a deposit slip?’ She calmly leaned towards the non-existent speaker.
‘Good afternoon! I will send that right out to you!’ I can’t remember if I pretended to put it in the airtube or not, but my adrenaline was building to crescendo amid a sense of impending doom.
‘While you are writing that out, DO YOU CURRENTLY HAVE A HOME MORTGAGE!’ I asked in sheer terror, surprising myself as I yelled the last part at the fictional speaker and the woman.
‘Yes, but it is with another bank.’ She curtly replied, seeming unfazed by my loss of control.
‘Have you ever thought about…..refinancing… your loan with Chase Bank? It could…..save money. RATES ARE LOW!’ I consciously took breaths in between words in an attempt to hold it together, making it until the last bit before my tone and volume began rapidly fluctuating again. The adrenaline and disgust were rising rapidly and overcame me. They must have been able to smell the sweat and fear, I briefly wondered if they enjoy this? I contained the overwhelming urge to run.
I felt like some sort of lab rat being grotesquely tortured, completely incapable of understanding the overarching purpose for having electrodes attached to my miniature nipples. I was shaking at this point, my fists balled, my pupils dilated, and my feet twitching in fight or flight response. They asked me some benign questions and things slowed down a little bit. The adrenaline slowly wore off and I sat in a post-ictal state as they talked more about the specifics of the Personal Banker position. I peered out at the glimmering SUVs backed up behind a red light. I observed a woman talking on her phone in one car, looking absolutely crazy as she gesticulated in the absence of context. I alternatingly glanced at the desk, at these people, at my shoes.
‘Are you motivated by financial incentives?’ A bald man officiously squaring a stack of papers over and over again asks me.
‘I don’t think so, no not really. Well….I mean… it depends. I want to earn some money.’ I couldn’t lie, the fear had evaporated. It all fell apart, but the honesty was a release. I knew the job was lost at this moment. I view my general indifference to pecuniary remuneration as a virtue, yet what I had just said was tantamount to confessing to a battery of priests that you don’t believe in god. These people lived for money, they worshiped it. There was no other reason they would work within this nightmare.
I walked out of the sterile box into the afternoon sun with new knowledge about myself and the world. Thank you Chase Bank for changing my life. I went home and bought a plane ticket to Mexico that left a few days later. I have never put that suit on again, it currently serves as moth food in some unknown closet.
I am certain that some will read this and perceive me as selfish, privileged, shortsighted, a shirker of duties, an addled mind detached from reality, a bum, naïve. In response: you can take whatever path you would like, but I have chosen a different path, something that can probably be gathered from this strange collection of writing seemingly devoid of purpose. I have had to struggle, but I have found profound happiness and tranquility. I have chosen to make time to sit in the sun, to enjoy my food, to walk, to meditate, to meaningfully converse, to make sumptuous food, to travel, to read, to write, to learn for learning’s sake, to make love, to challenge myself. I watch the frenzied pace of society with the utmost mirth.
I have made the effort to live the life that I want to lead in a world that increasingly seems to strive to make this more difficult.
We can never perceive where the path that we chose to walk will take us, the end is only an illusion, yet we can make decisions in each moment that will continue taking us down the path that we would like to walk. The radiantly profound moments drawing one onward, happiness is found in moments that pass as we walk the path, not in an end or in abstraction. I find my life expanding, flowering with each passing day. I chose this path with full consciousness and all of my heart.
There seem to be few dissenters bothering to speak over the din; I am writing to elucidate that it is an individual’s choice how they lead their life. I am exhorting you to sit down and take the time to figure out what your values are and examine to what degree you are living in accordance with them. You only have so many moments left.