Hunt for Yourself

Yesterday, a friend of mine who is in the throes of that horrible necessity called the job hunt – potentially one of the most demoralizing experiences there is – wrote to ask my advice. (Never a wise move unless you are jonesing for a novella, coz that’s what you’ll get. This person does not know me well so he had no idea what he was in for. We are Facebook friends only. We’ve never met in the flesh.)


His dilemma: having to go through yet another job interview, after which he figures he’ll spend weeks wondering not only if he got the job but whether or not he is utterly deficient as a human being. His experience so far has included not getting so much as a “no thank you” post-interview e-mail or call back. Just silence.


Dead air does have this uncanny power to bring even the most self-confident of us to our knees. But, more interesting to me, is the way it illustrates how adept we are at filling the quiet with our own noise – i.e., the cacophony of criticism we imagine others are leveling against us and about which we are most likely mostly wrong. How do I know? Because I know what I don’t know. I don’t know what others really think and feel, not even my closest friends, nevermind strangers, nevermind job interviewers. And unless you’re psychic, you don’t know either. So why spend time and energy inventing stories you'll never be able to corroborate? More importantly, why invest these stories/people with power over you? If you really want pain, why not do something more direct, like giving yourself a paper cut between your fingers just before plunging your hand into a nice salt bath?


In focusing our attention on this other person (as if thinking about what they might think about us could actually crack the door to their inner souls), we avoid focusing on our own thoughts, feelings, actions and the power we actually have over ourselves.


When a girlfriend of mine got upset because her mother did not like a piece of furniture my friend bought, I asked my friend if she liked her mother’s taste in furniture. As she mentally surveyed the living room of her youth, one which was chock-a-block with Victorian fru-fruness enough to choke out the sun, my friend was able to state an unequivocal no. “So why would you expect your mother to like your sleek, mid-century-modern hutch? More importantly, why do you need her to?”


It’s easy to understand how family and friends hook us, but the problem is that we are not satisfied to hand our power over to them alone. Oh no. We send out invitations to the great unwashed, asking everyone and their grandmother to weigh in on our deepest dreams. Why do we do that?

One of my favourite Gary Larsen cartoons names the Finkelsteins as the “they” in “they say,” which seems to suggest that if we knew who “they” were, we might be able to throw off the shackles of their judgment. After all, who would consider the Finkelsteins – in all their wacky Larsenesque suburban, white-bread weirdness and outdated cat-eye glasses glory – the arbiters of taste, or anything thing else for that matter? Yet we still give our personal Finkelsteins enormous airtime on the radio stations of our minds.


Whether we are projecting on a person we know intimately, or on nameless hoards, we either believe they are better than us, or worse than us, or that they are something we can never hope to be, or someone we would never want to become. Either way, we project an other against which we measure ourselves. And we always come up on the losing end. It does not matter what we project onto them in the end, however, because what’s really at stake here is not how great or pathetic they are, but how they have become the reasons we stop ourselves from being/becoming us.


Lest you think I am above my own “they” envy, let me be the first to admit I am hounded by a pack of "theys" who complicate my every decision. My favourite empty signifier is the ex-boyfriend onto whom I can project all manner of superlatives the moment the relationship ends. Here are some of my favourite "they" stories I like to tell when I find myself suddenly single: it seems my ex boyfriend's career skyrockets, and/or his new running regimen not only hardens his body but makes him nicer to be around, and/or his taller, thinner, more-degreed girlfriend/wife delivers sexual delights I can only hope to read about in Penthouse Forum (nevermind that admitting this shows just how depraved I am compared to the GF/W, who likely spends her leisure time reading Kirkegaard while bringing my ex to exquisite . . . oh, nevermind!)

What it took me a long time to learn, and what has been so liberating since learning it, is none of my ex’s lives need have an impact on mine. I don’t mean to suggest we are islands who have no effect on each other. What I’m saying is, someone else’s success is just that. Their success. And we can choose to rejoice in it, or use it to beat ourselves up. The former is more fun for everyone. But which ever you choose, the thing is, what their success is most definitely not is my failure. Or yours. Your success and/or failure are yours to own, and no one else can bring about either state. You get to do that for yourself!


On the first day of my MFA program, I met my beautiful friend, Brendan, who, within five minutes of yakking with me, delivered a piece of information that I instantly invested with sinister meaning. Turns out we both had had painting shows at the same time that year in the same city, both shows exhibiting paintings with literal seams stitched into the canvases, which I thought was a brilliant, original move on my part until I heard he'd done the same thing. My reaction? "Fuck! Now I have to change my whole practice so that I’m not competing with Brendan!" (Competing for what is a question I never bothered to ask myself).

His reaction? "Liz, there’s room for us all."



Having just spent three years in life-painting classes with a room full of people all making their version of the same model, how could I not have internalized the powerful fact that we all have our own idiosyncratic take on the same thing?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: DUH!

It’s entirely possible your worst fears will come true. You may make something that someone else has made better and/or marketed better. And that person may become rich and famous. And he or she may be, or become, horribly arrogant and, therefore, in your mind, undeserving of the slice of pie he/she has just removed from your hand. But the thing is, there really is no finite pie, and that piece in your hand comes from your perfectly whole pie, not theirs. Plus, there is always more pie. All you have to do is make it. And that way, you can make it to your taste!


Or, how about this metaphor: you cannot break or heal someone else’s leg by breaking your own. You see that, right? So, transfer that onto your life: you cannot have the life you want by focusing on how someone else is living theirs, or by wondering how they are judging yours. The sad truth is, everyone is way too focused on themselves to spend time judging you. And even if they are judging you, don’t you think they could be spending their time more wisely? And, even better, wouldn’t you want unleash yourself from that last thought because you can’t do a thing about what others think or do anyway? Seriously, who cares because look over here . . . this is far, far more interesting . . . LOOK! it's YOU!


What do you want?

My friend's brother just died at 43, having spent much of his adult life blaming others for his stuckness. He was wrong. He was bright, had access to a great deal of money, had an enviable education and was good looking. I know people who have had far less but who have given themselves so much more. It's about being kind to yourself. (BTW, I know depression is a chemical soup that often disables our ability to see ourselves clearly, but then be good to yourself and get help. You are worthy. You have been worthy since birth. Believe it. It's the truth.)

Since my job-hunting friend asked for my advice, I gave it to him. Take everything as information, not judgment. What information tells you is more about them -- the way a person treats you, or what they say to you, is not a reflection on you, it's about the other person's perceptions and where they are in their own journey. Pay close attention. That kind of information is power. Not power to abuse. Power to choose not to take it personally.

It's easy to attach a story to an event, especially a scary story in which you have been stalled in some way by external forces, but this (false) story does not actually do anything useful for you except cause you pain and obscure the real possibilities before you. When you treat events, conversations, other people's actions and most anything else that comes your way as information (and drop the story), it lights your way. You have a path. Stories are great, don't get me wrong, but they are fictions, to be enjoyed as such.

As for judgment, I suggest you leave that for other people.