What is Your Greatest Fear?
Proust Questionnaire: 2/35
I see an employee outside the Trader Joe’s on 28th and Walnut perched atop a concrete pillar, cross-legged, reading a book. It’s her break, or her shift hasn’t started yet, or she’s just particularly rebellious.
I’m enamored with this Trader Joes employee, reading her book in plain sight her supervisor, looking down with disinterest on the throngs of 5pm weeknight commuters frantically fighting for the only remaining parking space, many trying to decide between a red cart or a plastic red basket and dodging the speed-walking shoppers who race between them.
Meanwhile, 28th street is nearly grid-locked through three intersections, construction on Walnut has taken the road down to one congested lane, someone’s car alarm is repeatedly going off in the Target parking lot, and the handful of resident Boulder seagulls are screaming over a few spilled French fries in the McDonald’s drive-thru. The chaos is palpable. The employee reading her book is wonderfully unphased.
Once at an early job, my boss told me that maybe if I worked through my lunch breaks instead of taking that time to read a book, the leadership team might take my requests for a raise a little more seriously.
I couldn’t believe on a team of just 12, working in an incredibly stressful field, that my boss had the gall to suggest I work through lunch if I wanted to be deemed worthy of a livable wage. My reaction was to tell her that was a really fucked up thing to say. But she knew exactly what she was doing and how to poke at the soft underbelly of my insecurities.
I attempted to read through my lunch breaks the next few days to show I couldn’t be so easily intimidated, but I lasted barely a week before I was sitting in front of my computer, smashing a sandwich into my mouth, pretending to be deeply interested in the work while the sweet summer days slipped by. I spent the rest of my time at the organization frantically attempting to unfuck the career future that I had apparently ruined by taking my legally mandated lunch breaks (note: my future was absolutely fine — lunch breaks and all — and I promptly went on to earn a lot more money and receive better benefits and even be able to take my lunch breaks).
I thought it would be funny to write that my greatest fear is a Trader Joe’s parking lot at 5pm on a weekday, and in so many ways it is (the chaos, the people, the shouting, the beeping), but it’s probably more accurate to say that my greatest fear is not being able to be the woman on the concrete pillar, reading a book during her shift in the midst of pure chaos in which more hands were likely needed.
My greatest fear swings back and forth like a pendulum: Have I lived too carefully, or I have I not lived carefully enough?
In her book Saving Time, Jenny Odell says, “Today’s bootstrapper culture — informed by neoliberal values and intensified by the withdrawal of government services, fragmenting work, and the erosion of the social safety net — demands that each individual be responsible for her own destiny, ensuring her own security against that of others. To do so, she must invest her own time and effort, provide her own training, and calculate her own risk.”
A great big heaping portion of my anxiety is wrapped up in calculating risk — and wondering if any of my very minimal risk-taking goes sour, will anyone feel obligated to step in and help me? I have been nothing short of obsessive over the crushing weight of my personal responsibility for my destiny. But if I am intended to ensure my own security against the security of others, then who is left to help when that security inevitably falters?
In a commencement speech to Maharishi University of Management in 2014, Jim Carrey explains that his father could have been a comedian, but instead made the secure, conservative choice to be an accountant. “And when I was 12 years old, [my dad] was let go from that safe job and our family had to do whatever we could to survive,” Carrey says. “I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.”
I can’t tell if my friends and I are collectively just going through the very common experience of entering your 30s, or if neoliberal values and late-stage capitalism are really changing the landscape of work and life and meaning, but we’re all talking about this concept of ensuring security A LOT. Should we rent or try to buy? If we buy, can we really trust the market? Should we be saving every penny for retirement or living right now? Should we really be buying new pairs of skis if we didn’t add anything to our 401K last month? Should I spend the $95 on white water rafting on my 30th birthday with my most wonderful friends on the planet even though it means pulling that money out of my savings account because it’s been a really expensive month? (Dear reader: YES. Yes I should.)
Carrey wraps up the anecdote about his father by saying, “I realized one night in LA that the purpose of my life had always been to free people from concern, just like my dad. And when I realized this, I dubbed my new devotion the Church of Freedom From Concern, the Church of FFC. And I dedicated myself to that ministry.”
My greatest fear is occasionally attending a mass at the Church of Freedom From Concern, but never truly devoting myself to the ministry.
Over the weekend, I turned 30 under the haze of campfire smoke and shimmering Colorado constellations, the glimmering promise of a fresh decade plunked perfectly in my lap. A commencement you might say.
There’s not a single birthday gift better than the crisp cleanliness of re-assessing my fears after a decade of young adulthood. I love the roundness of those numbers — 30 — and the way they seem to slough off the hard, frantic edges of my 20s.
Odell says that, “...we can appreciate how much business there is in teaching people to play their cards right in a culture that systematically blocks avenues toward changing the rules.”
I’m so horribly exhausted from playing my cards right. Each year that passes, the game feels more and more rigged. I know the rules, I play the game, and it still seems inevitable that I will end up on my deathbed never quite managing the royal flush I was promised I’d eventually bootstrap my way into. Instead, I can only hope that in the end there are cards missing from my deck, scattered around the globe, with bent corners and coffee stains, knowing I did my darndest to make the best of my measly pairs and high cards along the way.
Your best one yet, Anja. So glad you are writing these.