Thoughts about work

I have been at my new job for about 7 months now. This seems like a good time to share some of my impressions. I currently work in government as a Policy Analyst in Los Angeles at the county level. My job involves doing research about many different issues and providing clear and easily-understandable recommendations. I hadn’t appreciated the diverse nature of my job until I took some time to truly think about it. If I describe the kinds of projects I have worked on during the past few days, it will provide a decent idea of what I mean.

Three days ago, I was researching massage establishments. Before starting this job, I had no idea that Los Angeles has a serious sexual trafficking problem. Young women are brought over from other countries and they are essentially coerced into sexual slavery. They work primarily at massage establishments that have “un-advertised services” for clients who are interested in such sexual services. My main research task in this area has been to look into various ways that current regulations can be updated to help fight against sexual trafficking.

Two days ago, I was looking into electronic scooters since they have been popping up all over the place around Los Angeles seemingly overnight. As useful as these things are for transportation and fighting against traffic, they come with all kinds of issues dealing with safety and riders dumping their scooters all over sidewalks and other locations. I’ve been asked to look into ways that other cities are handling the influx of e-scooters and what can be learned from them when it comes to crafting our own approach.

Yesterday, I was researching car wash facilities and how these businesses are often rife with violations dealing with wage theft and other kinds of abuses. The employees at these businesses are taken advantage of and I have been asked to research strategies that can help fight against such abuses.

Today, I have been looking into ways to update auto repair shop regulations in ways that can help protect consumers from being taken advantage of.

This position is not my “dream job” and it’s not a job I would consider myself passionate about. However, I think it’s important to stop and explicitly think about the ways we DO enjoy our work. We spend so much of our lives working and it’s a shame that hating one’s job is such an accepted part of life for a lot of people. It’s a society-wide cliché at this point.  Most people automatically assume that you likely don’t enjoy your job and you work because you need to, not because you want to.

The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.

-Mary Oliver

First World Problems

The synopsis of the movie "Frank" according to RottenTomatoes:

"...an offbeat comedy about a young wannabe musician, Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), who finds himself out of his depth when he joins an avant-garde pop band led by the mysterious and enigmatic Frank (Michael Fassbender), a musical genius who hides himself inside a large fake head, and his terrifying bandmate Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal)."

The film touches upon several interesting themes dealing with self discovery and self growth. It's not immediately apparent at first, but the two main characters of the film, John and Frank, are quite similar and they have chosen similar paths to discover themselves.  They both come from comfortable first-world lives where they lived without any problems and with loving parents.  Most of us would consider such a life a blessing since billions of people around the world don't even have access to shelter or clean water.  But there is perhaps a psychological cost to being born into such comfortable settings: it can create dull individuals who lack passion and don't have any real direction in their lives.  They do not know what they want to do. They have no calling and they feel like they have no purpose.  John is a great example of such an individual.  He has a typical and generic soul-sucking office job that many of us are familiar with either through direct experience or through having general knowledge about the nature of white-collar work in developed countries.  John lives at home with his parents and they love him and take care of him. This whole crazy trip that he takes and how he sacrifices his job and leaves his friends and family behind is about putting himself in a foreign and difficult situation in hopes of experiencing something difficult and powerful that will hopefully shape him into someone more interesting and give his music some SOUL  He is craving new powerful experiences that can potentially help mold him into a more interesting person with a genuine passion for writing good music.

Our lives in the United States (and I imagine in other developed countries)  are too easy and  people living here look for ways to create ordeals for themselves and make their lives more difficult. The greatest musicians, writers, artists, revolutionaries and a lot of interesting and passionate people in general have often come from difficult childhoods and led ordeal-filled, difficult, and/or interesting lives. They either lived in war zones or in extreme poverty or they had a lot of tragedy in their family like their parents, children, or siblings dying. Essentially, there is often times some kind of rough or difficult past and powerful experiences that helped shape who they eventually became. These powerful experiences also helped form their passions.  Many of us living in these comfortable environments lack such character and passion-forming experiences. We have to actively seek them. This is why John is a character that most of us can relate to.

Frank has also come from a background similar to John's.  This is made clear during one of the last scenes in the film.  Frank has gone missing and John is trying to find him.  Eventually, John tracks Frank down and finds him in a small town in Kansas. As he is speaking with Frank's parents, they talk to him about how Frank had such a wonderful childhood with two loving parents. John realizes how similar him and Frank actually are and directly comments on how parallel their childhoods have been.  This similar upbringing helps explain the path that Frank took.  He left his comfortable life and tried something extremely new and foreign to him. Hell, having a mask on full time is as random as it possibly gets. He joined up with two suicidal and mentally unstable band members (one of whom has a fetish for being sexually intimate with mannequins), an additional two members who don't even speak English, and a violent woman who is borderline insane as well.  He put himself in a difficult environment to help shape who he would become.  This is exactly what John tried to do in leaving his comfortable life and joining this band on their journey.

Of course, Frank's journey seems more genuine than John's. John does grow a lot in the process but it seems that he is constantly disconnected from the experience. He is on his phone and computer the whole time. He is obsessed with twitter followers and facebook /likes and comments and just wants attention in general. He doesn't seem to be doing all of this for the experience, self growth, and self discovery. A huge part of it for him seems to be craving the attention and fame. If that's your motivation in art, your music is going to be passion-less and dull. This is exactly what happens to John.  The film starts off with him trying to find his musical style and to write genuine lyrics and the film ends with him not having accomplished this goal or having come any closer to it.  This is potent commentary on what happens when art is not pursued for its intrinsic value but instead it is pursued for the external social and material benefits that it can bring.

Ultimately, most of us seek to to find paths to help unlock our passions. "Frank" provides wonderful commentary on this subject through the lives of John and Frank.

Awakening our passions

I believe all of us have the capacity to be passionate and fight towards a cause we believe in. However, unlocking these energies inside us requires direct experiences.


I know this sounds philosophic and a bit religious so far, but let me explain.  Consider these examples:


1) You are presented with a documentary about starving children in a third world country.  The film presents statistics, descriptions, and difficult-to-look-at imagery.  I believe most of us will be moved by being exposed to such content. But, this phase will most likely pass within a week or so and there won't be a lasting impact on our behavior or passions.


Now, consider actually visiting this country personally and seeing all the suffering, pain, and death firsthand. Imagine seeing these children dying, suffering, and starving in your very presence.  In contrast, this experience will be magnitudes more powerful and you are much more likely to be deeply affected by what you see and feel. A direct experience like this could move someone to act and start fighting towards decreasing such suffering.


2) You read a series of articles or a book on the most heavily polluted areas in the world.  You are presented with information on Chinese and Indian cities, various third world countries, and even neighborhoods in the U.S.  Let's also assume you see imagery and videos of the effects of the pollution on the environment and the people that live in these cities.


Now, let's transport you to a heavily polluted city in China where you are coughing incessantly, your eyes are burning, and you have to wear a breathing mask to be able to actually get through the day.  At the end of the day, you feel nauseous, exhausted, and overall very sick.  Let's assume you live through such conditions for at least a week to get a small taste of how your life would be in such a location.  Compare the difference between simply reading about an issue and actually living through it.  Direct experiences are much more likely to affect you at a deep level and move you to act.


3) This one is a real example.  Consider the case of Roger Boisjoly. He was a NASA engineer that worked on the launch of the space shuttle Challenger.  Boisjoly " found disturbing the data he reviewed about the booster rockets that would lift Challenger into space. Six months before the Challenger explosion, he predicted "a catastrophe of the highest order" involving "loss of human life" in a memo to managers at Thiokol."  Boisjoly was quoted saying "I fought like Hell to stop that launch. I'm so torn up inside I can hardly talk about it, even now." 

Roger Boisjoly
Source: http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/02/06/ap910901091_custom.jpg?t=1328572100&s=3

As a result of this experience, "Boisjoly traveled to engineering schools around the world, speaking about ethical decision-making and sticking with data. "This is what I was meant to do," he told Roberta, "to have impact on young people's lives."  For his whole life, he fought to promote a cause he believed in.  What if Boisjoly was a NASA engineer that wasn't directly involved with this launch but had read about the events that took place.  What if he had read about other engineers that had tried to stop the launch but had failed, would he still have fought for the cause he did?  Perhaps.  But, I believe his powerful experience and direct involvement are what pushed him towards fighting for what he believed in.  His experience had a life-long effect on who he was and what he wanted to do.


I know that I probably stated the obvious in this post but I believe we (people living in prosperous countries) often forget how truly disconnected and sheltered we are from a lot of terrible problems.  We don't directly experience situations that have the potential to move us and awaken our passions.  We generally lack experiences that make us want to truly and fully fight for something we believe in.  It's fortunate that we can live in such favorable conditions and not suffer.  However, it's also unfortunate because we are truly disconnected from many of the world's problems.


Quote source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/02/06/146490064/remembering-roger-boisjoly-he-tried-to-stop-shuttle-challenger-launch?sc=fb&cc=fp