I'm in the middle of biggest transition state of my life. Not only am I just about to embark in a new direction with my career, but I'm also just about to transition from a girlfriend to a wife, and motherhood looms on the horizon. As I move on to these significantly different phases of my professional and personal life, I'm doing a considerable amount of
thinking about my priorities and how I want to live. In doing so, I'm reminded of a real problem with
the society I exist in.
We're brought up to strive to get the best grades, to get
into the best university, to get the best job. What is it that's most widely lauded for these best and brightest
of my generation's college graduates?
The highest paying, of course: investment banking and management
consulting. These are jobs where
we work 100 hours a week, sometimes living out of a suitcase five days a
week. And once we have those jobs,
we're applauded when we earn a raise or a promotion. Competition for such recognition and income leads us to work
even harder and compromise more and more of our personal interests. We may live in big houses and drive
BMWs, but what are we sacrificing for it?
One of the partners I worked with at Accenture once told me he was
leaving one day for yet another business trip and his daughter said to him, "Daddy, when are you coming to visit us again?"
So as I ask myself the questions I outlined in my previous post, and as I look at the norms in American society, I can't help but wonder -- is this what we're striving for? As a society we're valuing money, a vehicle for consumption and symbol of status, above all else. We outsource parenting to nannies, our personal interests become a to do list that collects dust for decades, our family understands that we can't find the time to send a birthday card or a present because we're just so very busy. (There are fascinating psychological and economical explanations for why we've landed here, but those will have to wait for later posts.) We spend so much time talking about the environmental problems with development, but what about the cultural ones?
My first experience traveling to a developing country back when I was 19 resulted in an unexpected reaction. I didn't think, as Sheryl WuDunn told us to at TED this past week, "Wow, I've won the lottery. My life is so much better than these
Egyptian people's. It's my responsibility to help make their lives better." Instead I thought to myself, "Wow, these people seem a hell of a lot closer to the
things that ultimately matter most in life."
At the end of the day it's hard to argue that I'd trade my current state for living on less than a dollar a day, but I think it's important to recognize that for all we've gained with economic development, there's also a lot we've lost. As our professional lives become more competitive, which ultimately leads to pre-school becoming competitive, we should recognize that this societal problem is only going to get worse.
