In the 21st century, most Americans find themselves chasing external validation at a relentless pace. The usual targets are money, power, sex, and peer approval. It is not uncommon for someone in the first half of life to be chasing all four at once. We tell ourselves that we are on the path to a much better tomorrow, but something is missing. We are facing a ladder problem. We get to the top only to realize that the ladder has been leaning against the wrong wall the entire time.
I can now see that, until my mid-40s, I cast aside almost everything that is dear to me, climbing the ladder of outward success. Some people cheered me on as I achieved new heights. Others winced when I placed my full weight on their shoulders, reaching for the next rung. I didn’t realize that I was climbing the wrong ladder.
Heads up: This blog entry includes lots of quoted passages from some of my favorite authors. These passages are incredibly important to me. I am sharing them with you in case they speak to you as well.
The ego wants to want more than it wants to have
Eckhart Tolle captures the ladder problem so well:
The ego identifies with having, but its satisfaction in having is a relatively shallow and short-lived one. Concealed within it remains a deep-seated sense of dissatisfaction, of incompleteness, of “not enough.” “I don’t have enough yet,” by which the ego really means, “I am not enough yet.”
As we have seen, having—the concept of ownership—is a fiction created by the ego to give itself solidity and permanency and make itself stand out, make itself special. Since you cannot find yourself through having, however, there is another more powerful drive underneath it that pertains to the structure of the ego: the need for more, which we could also call “wanting.” No ego can last for long without the need for more. Therefore, wanting keeps the ego alive much more than having. The ego wants to want more than it wants to have. And so the shallow satisfaction of having is always replaced by more wanting. This is the psychological need for more, that is to say, more things to identify with. It is an addictive need, not an authentic one. Tolle, Eckhart. A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (p. 62 emphasis added). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Over the course of my 27-year career in the practice of law, I experienced the negative consequences of the pursuit of more. Law firm managers often became fixated on achieving greater profits per partner, consciously or unconsciously minimizing other indicators of personal well-being. Official statements about the importance of work-life balance were made, but every lawyer in a big law firm shares a common understanding. When bonuses are awarded and partnership promotions and allocations are determined, billable hours reign supreme.
The Myth of Meritocracy
These trends are not limited to the practice of law, of course. Ask any American how they are doing, and you can expect to hear the words “GREAT!” and “SO BUSY!” in response. This is particularly taxing on young professionals:
Suddenly your conversation consists mostly of descriptions of how busy you are. Suddenly you’re a chilly mortal, going into hyper-people-pleasing mode anytime you’re around your boss. You spend much of your time mentor shopping, trying to find some successful older person who will answer all your questions and solve all your problems. It turns out that the people in your workplace don’t want you to have a deep, fulfilling life. They give you gold stars of affirmation every time you mold yourself into the shrewd animal the workplace wants you to be. You’ve read those Marxist analyses of the bosses exploiting the workers. Suddenly it occurs to you that you have become your own boss and your own exploiter. You begin to view yourself not as a soul to be uplifted but as a set of skills to be maximized.
It’s fascinating how easy it is to simply let drop those spiritual questions that used to plague you, to let slide those deep books that used to define you, to streamline yourself into a professional person.
Furthermore, workaholism is a surprisingly effective distraction from emotional and spiritual problems. It’s surprisingly easy to become emotionally avoidant and morally decoupled, to be less close to and vulnerable with those around you, to wall off the dark jungle deep inside you, to gradually tamp down the highs and lows and simply live in neutral. Have you noticed how many people are more boring and half-hearted at age thirty-five than they were at twenty?
The meritocracy is the most self-confident moral system in the world today. It’s so engrossing and seems so natural that we’re not even aware of how it encourages a certain economic vocabulary about noneconomic things. Words change their meaning. “Character” is no longer a moral quality oriented around love, service, and care, but a set of workplace traits organized around grit, productivity, and self-discipline. The meritocracy defines “community” as a mass of talented individuals competing with one another. It organizes society into an endless set of outer and inner rings, with high achievers at the Davos center and everybody else arrayed across the wider rings toward the edge. While it pretends not to, it subliminally sends the message that those who are smarter and more accomplished are actually worth more than those who are not.
The meritocracy’s soul-flattening influence is survivable if you have your own competing moral system that exists in you alongside it, but if you have no competing value system, the meritocracy swallows you whole. You lose your sense of agency, because the rungs of the professional ladder determine your schedule and life course. The meritocracy gives you brands to attach to—your prestigious school, your nice job title—which work well as status markers and seem to replace the urgent need to find out who you are. Brooks, David. The Second Mountain (p. 22). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The Comparison Trap
Life in corporate America, without a healthy dose of self-awareness, can be miserable. Indeed, it is never possible to win when looking to your left and your right:
When you have nothing but your identity and job title to rest on, then you find yourself constantly comparing yourself to others. You are haunted by your conception of yourself. People who live in this way imagine that there are other people who are enjoying career splendor and private joy. That loser in college who did nothing but watch TV is now a big movie producer; that quiet guy in the training program is now a billionaire hedge fund manager. What does it profit a man to sell his own soul if others are selling theirs and getting more for it?” Brooks, David. The Second Mountain (p. 25). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
In big law firms, many lawyers cope with the pressure by drinking ever increasing amounts of ethanol to numb the pain. Vacations and family birthday parties get deferred or missed. Flush with outward success, partners feel entitled to help themselves to whatever captures their attention. Overlooked spouses and children become anxious and depressed. Divorces happen. And worse.
As the mantra of meritocracy rises, inevitably good performance metrics tainted by bad behavior begin to be tolerated. When this happens, any remaining positive work culture disintegrates quickly. Partners begin to hoard client work because they need the billable hours. Associates hunger for the billable hours they desperately need to survive and try and outmaneuver each other for work. Everyone feels insecure and acts accordingly. Resentment and fear rise. Insiders, with their behavior being rewarded with cash and even more work, create their own high-performing teams. Outsiders try desperately to become insiders and, in the meantime, wait for scraps of work to fall from the table. It is no wonder that one survey ranked “associate attorney” as the unhappiest job in America.
Of course, career dissatisfaction is not limited to the ranks of big law. Establishing a satisfying career for many in America is more challenging than ever, where the gap between the haves and the have nots has reached its highest level in 50 years. Today, the 400 richest people in the US own more than the 150 million adults in the bottom 60 percent, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.
The Way Up is Down
There are a number of solutions to our individual and collective ladder problem. The first, and arguably best, solution involves simply climbing down the ladder:
One of the best-kept secrets, and yet one hidden in plain sight, is that the way up is the way down. Or, if you prefer, the way down is the way up. This pattern is obvious in all of nature, from the very change of seasons and substances on this earth, to the six hundred million tons of hydrogen that the sun burns every day to light and warm our earth, and even to the metabolic laws of dieting or fasting. The down-up pattern is constant, too, in mythology, in stories like that of Persephone, who must descend into the underworld and marry Hades for spring to be reborn.
In legends and literature, sacrifice of something to achieve something else is almost the only pattern. Dr. Faust has to sell his soul to the devil to achieve power and knowledge; Sleeping Beauty must sleep for a hundred years before she can receive the prince’s kiss. In Scripture, we see that the wrestling and wounding of Jacob are necessary for Jacob to become Israel (Genesis 32:26–32), and the death and resurrection of Jesus are necessary to create Christianity. The loss and renewal pattern is so constant and ubiquitous that it should hardly be called a secret at all.
Yet it is still a secret, probably because we do not want to see it. We do not want to embark on a further journey if it feels like going down, especially after we have put so much sound and fury into going up. This is surely the first and primary reason why many people never get to the fullness of their own lives. The supposed achievements of the first half of life have to fall apart and show themselves to be wanting in some way, or we will not move further. Why would we? Rohr, Richard. AARP Falling Upward. Wiley. Kindle Edition.
Everyone eventually descends
Seldom do we have the insight or fortitude to start climbing down the ladder on our own. Most of the time, we simply fall. Richard Rohr explains:
Sooner or later, if you are on any classic “spiritual schedule,” some event, person, death, idea, or relationship will enter your life that you simply cannot deal with, using your present skill set, your acquired knowledge, or your strong willpower. Spiritually speaking, you will be, you must be, led to the edge of your own private resources. At that point you will stumble over a necessary stumbling stone, as Isaiah calls it; or to state it in our language here, you will and you must “lose” at something. Rohr, Richard. AARP Falling Upward (p. 65). Wiley. Kindle Edition.
This is really difficult.
The human ego prefers anything, just about anything, to falling or changing or dying. The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo, even when it is not working. It attaches to past and present, and fears the future. Rohr, Richard. AARP Falling Upward (p. 65). Wiley. Kindle Edition.
But descend we must. Climbing down (or falling off) the ladder is a necessary precursor to the second half of life – the second mountain. It is only when we descend that we are able to glimpse, and eventually reach, solid ground.
As I close this post, I invite you to listen to this song by Nathan Clark George.