“Every morning I have to decide if I’m going to get on the train or jump in front of it,” Larry said, as the room broke out in laughter.
We were having Parker’s three-year-old birthday party and our neighbors, Larry and Sally, had come over with their five-year old twins.
Larry had been regaling us with hysterical stories of his arduous commute from northern New Jersey into Manhattan (sprinting with the crowd from his car to the train on the way in, and doing the same on the way out), and his even more arduous relationship with his boss. The stories were hysterical, that is, if you were not the one living them. But scratch the surface of his party-humor ever so slightly and one could see the truth of the matter.
When the two of us happened to be in the kitchen, the conversation turned more serious.
“How long is he going to be in the country?” I asked of his boss. Being in a global company, Larry’s manager changed every few years as executives on the international fast-track burnished their resumes with stints around the globe.
“At least another year,” he said, shaking his head. “So that’s the question: Can I do another year?”
“Can you?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “He’s already been here a year and I’m so done.”
There is no question — and I guarantee you that Larry would not argue with the statement — that his job and commute are absolutely miserable, and I don’t mean the kind of miserable you can shake off when you come home or on the weekends. I mean the kind of miserable that changes your personality (at least while you are enduring it) at a deep and disturbing level. The kind that changes your relationship with your wife and kids after their empathy has turned into frustration (“Make a change or just deal with it!”). I mean the invasive, creeping, all-contaminating type of miserable only known by those who have truly hated their jobs and, at least for a time, felt helplessly bound to them.
And that is exactly how Larry feels, bound to a job because of all the years he has spent there, and all the “stuff” he has accumulated — pay level, pension/retirement benefits, vacation time, status, etc. And I also mean “bound” by one of the faultiest exercises of logic I’ve ever come across, even though I’ve come across it plenty — the old “devil you know” mentality.
And why is this thinking so flawed? Because if you are unhappy enough to refer to your situation (either the job in general or your boss specifically) as “the devil,” and facetiously contemplate jumping in front of your train, you are in a very bad place. So to assume that the majority of “other” places might be even worse makes no sense. Also, to assume that you will leverage none of your hard-won familiarity with evil to avoid it at the next stop is silly. All the odds, in fact, almost guarantee that your situation will get better through a change.
And I’m not leaving the financial considerations off the table. On more than one occasion, I’ve asked folks in this situation if they’d probably get a good salary bump through a move, and I’ve been told a jump of 20 percent is probably a minimum.
Thus, when we still see no movement, we must look for the real culprit holding folks back from exploring greener pastures — illogical fear. The fear, for example, that you will fall into a deep chasm separating a two-foot jump. You know you can make the jump, you know you can almost step over the chasm, yet the possibility of falling into it still exists, and that is paralyzing.
But rather than signing on the dotted line only to see your new boss kick off his shoes to reveal cloven hooves, what you will likely experience the exhilarating feeling reserved for those who’ve been released from captivity, often described by the folks on one of my favorite shows, “Locked Up Abroad,” as “pure joy.”
And even in the worst case scenario, if the horns on your new manager’s head do appear, you will have left all the trappings behind — the next move, and all subsequent, will be far, far easier. Perhaps the only damage will be a too-brief pit stop on your resume, and surely you would not forgo happiness to avoid that minor blemish?
And that is what’s at stake here, nothing less than your happiness — the pursuit of which our founding fathers found worthy of enshrinement in the Declaration of Independence. Your mission in life is not to pursue a sound financial retirement or to make sure you’ve got four weeks’ vacation (for vacation from a job one hates is tainted by the thought of return), but the pursuit of happiness. And I can guarantee you one thing — fleeing the devil can only get you closer it. Trust me, I’ve been there.
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