Years ago, I was in a production of Kaufman and Hart’s, You Can’t Take It With You. If you’ve never seen it, it’s a lovely little play (first performed in 1936) which won the Pulitzer Prize. It was made into a movie in 1938 by Frank Capra. The movie starred Lionel Barrymore, Ann Miller and Jimmy Stewart. The production I was in back in 1980 was a lot of fun, and the show is a perennial crowd favorite. But it also carries a profound message: why should you waste your life working at a job you don’t like, if you could do something you love?
Most of the world has been asking that same question for almost two centuries, and people are asking that question now, more than ever before. It’s a question I have asked, in one form or another, for most of my life. Until recently, I wasn’t even sure why I was asking it, and I certainly didn’t know there was an answer available. Now, I know a little more.
Before about 1800 or so, most people around the world were born into poverty and ignorance and could expect to die that way. Religion and the Church still held sway among the lower classes. The Rationalist and Romantic periods were the first glimmerings of a new way of thinking, but they were still primarily only for the rich. The rise of the Industrial Revolution changed everything. It required the establishment of universal education, and eventually, universal suffrage.
The intent was to create generations of good and tractable little worker bees. To some extent it worked, but it also saw the beginnings of a growing dissatisfaction with the social strata that were created. As people became more educated, more aware of the world around them, they started to see their jobs and their place in society as little more than cages. The political revolutions of the Eighteenth Century were replaced by social and class revolutions in the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries.
The Industrial Revolution is over, but we are still shackled with the systems it created. The late Twentieth and early Twenty-First Centuries have seen a huge leveling of social norms and a broad democratization of the planet. There are still a few holdouts, of course. Equality of race, gender and political power scares the crap out of demagogues and dictators. Add the Pandemic in on top of that, and we are seeing that the old ways are well and truly broken. I say, good riddance.
People everywhere are questioning everything. Good. Let the old world die, we’ve outgrown it. Nation-states, religious systems, class boundaries and economies are all tottering. It’s a chaotic mess, but I, for one, believe that something better will rise from the ashes. But it leaves people wondering – what do I do now? How should I live? The answer is relatively simple – but not remotely easy.
You must do the kind of work that speaks to you, the kind of things you would enjoy doing. I don’t mean that everybody should go out and try to be actors or musicians or dancers. There is always going to be a place for that, a need for creatives. But creatives must now learn to be entrepreneurs, they must market themselves, because no one else will do it for them. And not everyone will want to do that kind of work. To echo Grandpa Vanderhof in the play, some people will still want to work in the factories or build houses or farm the land. Some will want to go down to Wall Street, or even fly the oceans – you can’t stop them. But you must never let someone else tell you what you should be, or what you should want. Slavery in all its forms must die. Democracy means that everyone has a voice, everyone has a place.
In the end, what the play You Can’t Take It With You was trying to say is that just because you have money or fame or political power – that doesn’t make you a king. It doesn’t mean you’re important, or at least not more important than others. But it also begged the question – So what is important? How do we understand a world where everyone does whatever they want? How can society function under those terms? Pretty well, really.
With very few exceptions, most people want to work. It makes us feel useful, like we’re doing our part. But I contend that what we work at should be our choice, not someone else’s idea. People do their best work when they’re fully invested in the task. It also helps to know what you expect to get from the work you do.
If, like most people, all you really want to do is live out a quiet life, raise a couple of kids and retire peacefully – there’s any number of jobs that will pay you well and not stress you out too much. Suppose you feel that you want to make a difference in your community, then maybe working for a non-profit is your best path. If you feel that you should be rich and/or important, either become incredibly famous or go into politics. One absolute, however: if you want to be truly, disgustingly rich – you can’t work for anyone else.
There’s a lot of ‘success gurus’ out in the wild, telling you to ‘find your passion’. Why? That seems high stress and very confusing. Maybe what you really need to do is just figure out what you’re good at, decide how much money you need to live on, and then find a way to earn the second thing, doing the first thing. Life really isn’t all that hard – we make it more difficult than it needs to be. Just go out into the world, have respect for others, don’t hurt anyone, and then do what really makes you happy. If it doesn’t make you happy, do something else. You can’t take it with you, after all.
Be well.
bcd