Is our vision of success, work and school warped?

Photo by author (2021)

Why do we work? Most of us work so that we earn enough of money to survive and to fulfil the needs and desires that we have. In addition, many of us work for some vague sense of duty—we’ve been socialized to think that hard work is a value in and for itself. Then many of us work to gain prestige and power. All of these are as good reasons as any; quite human in their own right.  But do they make sense? Of course, very few of us can afford not to work—and in the capitalist society in which inequality has grown to mindboggling dimensions, many people have to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet. But when our motivation is to work in order to make more money than other people and thus gain power over them, I have to say that I disagree. And the education system is fully complicit in this enterprise, affecting in particular a rather small segment of families who are determined that their kids must make it to the top.

 There is the old story about a rich man watching a fisherman leisurely go about his occupation, and the former advising the latter about how he could increase the efficiency of his operation and therefore accumulate more so that his could become a profitable and expanding business and the fisherman could become rich. When the fisherman asks why should he do that and what would he do once he’s become rich, the answer is: Then you’d be free to go fishing! This story has so much truth that it’s far more important than the joke it’s designed to be. We work hard for best 50 years of our lives (those of us who survive that long, as many succumb en route—the US life expectancy has actually dropped over the past several years) to enrich ourselves and to rise up in economic and social hierarchy, foregoing leisure and often sacrificing our families in the process, so that we can finally do what we want to do—except that it’s too late by then.

We’ve been programmed to aspire to things that are detrimental to our happiness and wellbeing.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s great to work hard for the things that you’re really interested in. Work can bring satisfaction and meaning to life. It’s a truly lucky person who can make a profession of the thing that she or he loves. It can be anything: arts or science, craftsmanship or cooking, or caring for others or the environment. Or anything else that makes one tick. This is what the Japanese term Ikigai implies: choose your profession based on where three things meet: what you love, what you’re good at, and what the world needs (some add a fourth dimension: what you can be paid for).

Unfortunately, few people live by this principle. For many it is not a choice.  For many others, it is a conscious choice. When they are young, they have a passion, but decide to forego it in favor of a “good and respectable” profession, hoping perhaps that it may become their passion once they get into it, but more often deluding themselves that they can enjoy life after they’ve made it professionally and financially. Too often, it is the competition for more money and a higher position that itself becomes the passion. We dedicate our lives to something that brings us social status, never mind what the content of the work is, even if it is socially or environmentally destructive. In the process, we lose the friendships and relationships we used to cherish and the thing that once was our passion is, at best, put on the backburner.

For many people, the sign of success is to make so much money that one can retire early enough to have some life left to enjoy. To me, this is an unmistakable demonstration of the fact that you feel that your life (and I say “life” instead of “work” because life becomes work when we dedicate everything to it) is actually undesirable and stressful.

Today I was thinking about my own path. When I was a kid, I was passionate about music. I couldn’t imagine living a day without dedicating the better part of my waking hours to music. At some point I realized that I was not talented enough to have a meaningful existence as a musician. So I was thinking about alternatives. I started musicology studies at the university. I thought that I could become a music researcher or even that I could simply become a librarian. As I also loved books and literature, I could have a quiet and regular life in the library that would pay my bills and in the evenings I could play in a band and hang out at clubs.

At some point of time, I changed my thinking. Perhaps it was the implicit expectations of my parents who were high-stakes professionals. So I started studying geography and social sciences, continued all the way to a PhD. My career came to focus on international development and environmental issues, so I didn’t entirely sell out—I was at least determined to do something that I was interested in and something that was good for society. But amazingly—now in retrospect—music that I thought was the backbone of my life faded to the background for many long years. I became immersed in the international environment work and the political circles in that field. Now I regret that I stopped practicing music, stopped playing in bands, don’t anymore know what goes on in the field, got disconnected from the good people who used to be the center of my life—many of whom found a way of making a living in or around music and who still hang out at the clubs and concerts where new music is being played.

I sometimes regret having worked so hard and long hours, traveling so much and moving around following a rising career, that I lost all of the above.

America where I have lived for the past quarter century is probably the worst, at least compared with Europe where I grew up. Here one’s success and prestige is measured almost exclusively in money and media visibility. It’s also a very aggressive and competitive society. And this competitiveness starts very early in life—in fact, earlier and earlier, as ambitious parents program the lives of their kids from kindergarten and even before, pushing them to work hard and excel. This makes life a living hell for many kids, especially those from “better” families; families that want their offspring to go to an elite university and to get a well-paid job as a lawyer or doctor or a successful businessperson.

We see the results of this in sharply risen depression and teenage (and even younger) suicides. Child psychology indisputably shows that for a healthy development of the brain children need plenty of unstructured free time so that they can explore their thoughts and interests and develop their personality. Children whose time is overscheduled demonstrate frequent behavioral issues and emotional challenges. Not only do they lose their creative minds, they get a warped view of the world, seeing everything—including relationships—as transactional.

This truth is of course an anathema to most “successful” parents who want their children to “succeed” in the same manner. Children’s free, creative time is totally obliterated by the Ivy League and other “selective” universities’ emphasis on “well-rounded” candidates. Being well-rounded is a code word for an idealized candidate who not only excels at the relevant academic subjects, but who also is a star athlete, is proficient in playing an instrument, volunteers their time for the community—all the while taking advanced placement classes at high school so that they’ll have a leg up at college admissions. To me, this is a recipe for misery and disaster. Instead of mental and physical relief freeing the mind, the “hobbies” become a chore and an obligation; helping out in the community just another way of enhancing one’s resume.

The Ivy League and other equivalent universities are not demonstrably advantageous to students’ learning. Sure, they have many academic stars on faculty, but since when does being an academic star make one a good teacher? In fact, you may often find more dedicated and competent teaching faculty in less prestigious colleges (even community colleges). The truth is that these elite universities do not sell education that is so superior to lesser places. What they sell is a dream. A dream of an education amongst the smartest professors and students money can buy, an education that allows the students to join an exclusive club of elites themselves. A capitalist dream.

Selectivity is the main selling point for these universities. Selectivity shows how difficult it is to get in, which in turn suggests that everyone who did belongs to a clique of assumed geniuses. (Never mind that many of those admitted are legacy admissions or offspring of wealthy donors or just happen to fit into the suitably “well-rounded” or diversity profile that was in demand at a specific moment.) Scarcity creates value and that is why elite universities strictly limit the number of students they take in, even if they had the capacity to educate many times more.

In the US (and in places like China and some other Asian countries) a kid must sacrifice her or his childhood to pass the bar to an elite university, a rite of passage many kids—and their parents—see as the essential ticket to a satisfying life. This is very different from most parts of Europe where, in the first place, most universities are public institutions that all maintain a similar level of quality. In places like France, anyone can start studying at a university, so one doesn’t need to struggle through sleep-deprived teen-age years to get into one. Consequently, people study more what they want, many never graduating (it helps, too, that higher education is free or cheap, as it should be for something so essential to society). This is not wasteful because it results in people being able to explore and learn things that interest them; and, for society, a better educated and informed population is a great advantage (although some Americans, especially on the right, think they benefit from an ignorant electorate).

A degree from Harvard, Yale or Princeton sounds impressive and may open some doors to fancy clubs and circles—at least if your family background is respectable. In that sense, a less than spectacularly talented legacy scion will trump, hands down, a brilliant scholar from a poor or minority background.

Frank Bruni in his excellent book, Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be, demonstrates that in reality, for most people, there is little correlation between the university where they went and their success in life. When he did his research just a half a dozen years ago, he found that only about 30 of American-born CEOs of the top-100 companies had attended an elite university; and the same goes for the 100 members of the US Senate, where fewer than 30 had got their degrees from Ivy League or equal colleges. Instead, about half of these success stories had attended a variety of less known colleges not to be found in the top-25 listings. For the vast majority of people, in the public or private sector, there is even far less correlation.

What is worse, even the above defines “success” as becoming wealthy and powerful. Some of these people may of course be happy, but I’d bet that most of them thrive on prestige and power that money brings, rather than the actual content of their work or the societal good that it brings.

Which brings me back to where I started. Shouldn’t we be pursuing a fulfilling life, of liberty and happiness? And shouldn’t we be doing it now, rather than when we’re too old to enjoy it fully? In the words of John Lennon: Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

Another sage, Timothy Leary suggested we’d be better off to turn on, tune in and drop out. As I grow older, I see even more clearly how right he was.

My daughter is still young. She has a remarkably creative mind and a wild imagination, like children do. Our priority as parents is to help her never lose these qualities. We do not want her ever feel so stressed out that she feels sick or loses sleep. We want her to pursue a life of happiness and wonderment, following her passion wherever it may take her.

For myself, I have decided not to do anything anymore for the sake of prestige, a higher position, more money or power. I will continue working on things that bring me fulfilment and that society benefits from, even to a small degree—and I have started to reactivate the musical side of my life, making a point of listening to new music and picking up my beloved flute that I’ve been packing along through all these years. Ikigai has been translated as the reason why one wants to get up in the morning. There are so many wonderful things in this world that can give you reason. Going to the office in a crowded commuter train or sitting in a traffic jam, just so that you can impress a bunch of colleagues, is not one of them.

[Published in Medium.com]