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Rushing roulette
Opinion: Pressure to climb the greasy pole of success can knock us off balance.
Waiting for what felt like an interminable time for the parades on St Patrick’s Day, a thought struck me like a truck with cut brakes. I’m well-educated, well-travelled, I’d even go as far to say talented. And yet, instead of putting those educational experiences or talents to good use and living it up in the big (or indeed any) city, here I was, a million miles away from where I’d like to be career wise, standing in Strabane waiting for parades that should’ve started forty five minutes ago. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Most of the time I’m reasonably happy with myself, or at least I can keep myself satisfied, “I’ve done a lot when you add it all up”, “Everybody has to earn their dues” and whatnot, but every so often I get these pangs of high anxiety: Where am I going, what does it all mean etc. They don’t last long, but they can be very potent. Often they’re prompted by something, like seeing Lewis Hamilton. He’s ten months older than me, a Formula One world champion and his girlfriend is a Pussycat Doll. I don’t even have a full driver’s license. Or a cat.
It’s perhaps a by-product of our times that I feel like this. We may not work the fields like my grandparents would’ve, but the strain and pressure of everyday life that may once have manifested itself on the hands and the face has been internalised for people now. The world is a much smaller place, standards of education are incredibly high, and while of course that is a good thing, the presence of such opportunities only increases the pressure for you to get one.
Take, for instance, if you want to be a doctor. You have to spend years getting a near perfect Leaving, followed by years getting near perfect scores to get the specialty or residency you want. You then have to spend years climbing the ranks, reading up all the latest medical journals to keep ahead of the pack, and do this while conscious of the fact that any mistake at any stage, there are throngs of people in a similar boat ready to pounce on it.
Sadly, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: we put ourselves under such pressure because we see everyone else doing exactly the same, and we feel forced to keep up. We don’t want our mothers to be stumped when they bump into a friend of theirs and get asked “And what’s young Whatstheirface up to these days?”. We can’t help but feel antsy when we hear somebody we know from school got a great job somewhere, the type that makes you think “Why the hell can’t I get something like that?” Or worse yet, the type that makes your loved ones say that out loud. And if you’re more artistic than vocational, being festooned with TV shows making people instant stars at whatever-you’re-having-yourself doesn’t exactly help things.
It may be natural to want everything right now, or indeed get frustrated when plans get waylaid, but just because you haven’t made partner by 30, or reached stardom at 21 doesn’t mean it won’t happen at all. The actor John Mahoney, aka Frasier Crane’s father, was 37 when he first walked on a stage, and how many films did Morgan Freeman star in when he was in his twenties? Life isn’t a race, and success isn’t a destination. If you can be happy in yourself, and take pleasure in how things are instead of how they ought to be, then you’ll get there in due course.
