A relative of mine, who is 52 years old and a frequent visitor in my home, told me last week that he is again out of work. His job was not phased out. He was not downsized, nor was his company placed in bankruptcy. Rather, he is different. He is a serially failed entrepreneur. The latest enterprise to sink: a school for gifted students.
My cousin, a bright and sometimes winning man, cited the usual culprits; the economy, lack of money, shifting styles in education, and yet...
Yet one senses something deeper at work here. My cousin's failure after all is a failure in a series. First it was the real estate business, then the hospitality industry. Then it was back to school. Two more graduate degrees and then he started an educational testing service and following that, several schools. What's frustrating about these catastrophes is they are often lined with sprinklings of true success and innovation. He did make money in real estate. He did turn a profit in a franchise hotel. He did do extremely well in graduate school. He is a gifted teacher and really knows how to reach students.
Nevertheless, his recitation of work episodes sounded a theme that has become familiar: he underestimated the costs, did not anticipate market conditions, failed to see changes. In listening to his tale, I cannot help but think that there's a drunk-like quality to his work life - even though he never touches liquor. There is a kind of zigzag, a long pell-mell journey without a road map, a flight without navigation. Despite his bedrock American optimism, I feel my heart break listening to him, though I say nothing.
He asks for my help to write a cover letter, but I feel a tidal wave of exhaustion by the prospect. Instead, I suggest we take a walk. My cousin squints into the distance as he reflects and verbally casts about for a new set of sea legs, a foothold in reality and in finance.
Finally, I ask: Did your mother ever ask you what you wanted to be?
"No," he said wistfully. "This was not a conversation I can recall."
I knew his mother. She reminded me of a sunburned, Jewish Katherine Hepburn (actually it was eczema flush) -- a practical woman, she was a school secretary.
"There was something about her," my cousin added. "Although she had a full time job, it seems that only part of her was employed."
"Which part of her?" I asked.
"Her hands, her thoughts, but not her feelings..."
"Which feeling was unemployed?" I asked.
"Her desire...her desire should have been receiving unemployment benefits," my cousin said.
"So, you could say that she was emotionally unemployed. That her feelings had been laid off?" I asked.
"Yes, that's it exactly. Her feelings about herself, her ambition, her desire, were not properly employed -- they might have been used to follow things through, but they got sent off somewhere."
He might have used the colloquial term "she had ADD" in the sense that she did not follow through, but the term emotional unemployment or "laid off" held much more promise. For some people their desire or ambition gets lost between the head, the heart and the hands - the matrix that must operate in order to have a big life.
Was there a link between his mother's emotional unemployment and his serial failures?
I decided to ask him that question.
"Undoubtedly there is," he answered. "Because right now I feel it -- the conflict. I was an unusual Jewish kid," he explained while carefully kicking the dirt off his left shoe. "I liked going into the forest alone and I'd go camping by myself, fishing. I felt peaceful there...I feel I could go back to the forest right now," he continued sheepishly. "I still feel the pull -- much more so than those half-finished cover letters on the dining room table. What do you think doc, should I go?"
"You have a conflict between feeling at peace and feeling your desire to get ahead," I answered. "This is what must be worked out."
