Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 8:00AM Stay Put
Each morning when I wake up now, I think, "Thank God my wife didn't go into labor last night."
It's not the actual act of labor I'm worried about. I'm good in crisis situations, and I've seen enough babies being born in our childbirth class (on video) to not be as alarmed as I might be had I seen it all happen cold turkey. Rather, I'm thankful that our daughter is staying put, growing, and getting fat.
Were she to come eight weeks early, we'd be fine. She'd survive. But, it would be better for her to stay where she is a bit longer. She'll be healthier and less at risk medically. And, her room isn't quite ready yet.
It's so hard to stay put. In a world where you can be in another country by nightfall and have a new job by Friday, staying where you are seems so boring. Couple our desire for movement with the inane assumption that everyone's grass is greener and we're itching to have any life but ours.
And so we jump. We run away. We leave. We move on. We try something (or someone) new.
And then we repeat the process. Then we look around and after a few years we have nothing more than an expertise in transitions. We have great stories and scars to go with them, but our resume - and quite possibly many relationships - sucks.
I've had interns who have a list of clubs and groups and projects they've completed. But they've never done anything longer than six months. I meet with people regularly who want to change jobs, but they've been at their current one less than a year.
What I'm starting to challenge people on is this:
What could you do or learn if you stayed put?
If you're creative enough, disciplined enough, and determined enough, you'll take the next six months (or even eight weeks) and develop a skill or a relationship or a project that infuses your current work with excitement that will make your current lamenting seem like misguided wishing.
Reader Comments (4)
I am a firm believer that our generation is a commitment-phobic people. Not necessarily the usual "relationship" commitment-phobia you see in romantic comedies and chick lit, but actually a commitment-phobia about anything that involves us staying put in anything for too long. It sometimes manifests in relationships but more often in jobs, locations, hobbies, etc. We are an instant gratification people and as soon as we are gratified we are moving on to the next thing.
The sad thing is that in a quest to always find the next best and greatest thing, we are rarely fully gratified in our current pursuits. How much of life we must miss out on living a life like this?!
I think early in life there is going to be a lot of transition, a lot of moving around - that unsettling feeling that tells you there has to be something better. As Elisa said above - we are a commitment phobic generation - but we are also one that would rather find something we love, or at least like now, than have to put in our dues at somewhere we don't see a future with for the sake of experience. I sway back and forth on this all the time - and while I think something can and should be learned from every experience, I also think life is too short to "settle" if it's not where you want to be or what you want to be doing.
Great thoughts as always Sam.
sigh. what about four years and three months? is that long enough?...
Maybe. Maybe not. That's the worst part - there's no arbitrary limit in terms of how long you need to stay put. You'll know when it's time to move on by a set of signs, factors, and circumstances.