The other day one young woman was telling me about her dinner with Mr. X. The man was not in a good place: he was being down on himself, feeling gloomy, dissatisfied, depressed.
I know a thing or two about Mr. X and even met him a few times. By conventional standards, he is, to put it mildly, a very accomplished and impressive guy. A self-made man, he has spent the last three decades propelling himself into a progressively narrower sector of the income-distribution pie. Forgoing leisure, he devoted most of his waking hours to his work: hundreds of companies successfully bought, restructured, guided to success, sold – efforts resulting in considerable wealth shared by him and his partners. Now, in his middle age, he is at the point, where the proverbial 1% seems to him like a large group of people with meager resources. Not only that he warranted the best opportunities for the future generations of his offspring, but he has the luxury to be generous to other individuals, and very charitable to organizations of important cultural value.
So, what could possibly make this strong, smart, and powerful person with a long list of achievements hate on himself? The destruction of the planet? The intellectual downfall of humanity? Maybe he feels inadequate as a parent? Those are universal equalizers that should make us all feel agitated. Should, but not necessarily do. As it turns out, it's his professional self-assessment: he feels that he could've done better for the partnership; that he didn't achieve his best results. He gives his performance a moderate grade of B+.
How curious… I constantly feel like a career failure as well. Only my reasons are sort of the opposite of Mr. X's. I know that I've given 110% to every job. From a purely academic standpoint, my professional efforts deserve nothing less than an A+. But, due to a huge entanglement of reasons, including my gender, I have never received matching rewards, was forced to accept comparatively inadequate compensation and insufficient recognition.
On the other hand, maybe my marks are always A+ because my undertakings are a tad below my true capacity. What if there were no obstacles and I would have opportunities to embark on Herculean tasks – the business pursuits of much larger magnitude? How would I do then? Would I still be able to impress? How would I feel about myself and my results?
Maybe the real reason we both feel so shitty about ourselves lies in the betrayal of our true destinies (or, at least, what we think they should've been). As a student, Mr. X was deeply affected by the brilliance of Marcel Marceau and was a part of a street-performing innovative circus troupe. And all I wanted to do since I was 15 years old was to write cultural critique – absorb, decipher, and opine on various art forms. Instead, both of us made a choice of going the practical route: killed the dreams and embarked on money-making pursuits (different amounts, same principle) in order to support our families. In his new book Missing Out, psychoanalyst Adam Phillips argues that we care about the lives we failed to live more than the ones we actually endure. Adam Phillips, dude, I feel ya!
Then again, let's say both Mr. X and I did have a chance to realize our wildest creative fantasies… but the only grades we could achieve were C's and D's. Or what if we received A's from others for doing what we loved, but inside our neurotic heads still felt that we had not risen above F's? What then?
We don't know. It's unlikely we ever will. Meanwhile, here we are: two very different individuals with incomparable pasts, presents, and futures, but virtually in the same imaginary place – a dingy dinghy with a sad name Gloomy Fool.
The Frustrated CFO 