A while ago, TLP (The Last Psychiatrist) wrote an article around the subject of narcissism, where he used this selection from the movie “Glengarry Glen Ross.” In it, Alec Baldwin’s character delivers what must be the most hostile motivational speech in the history of cinema, telling three poorly-performing salesmen that they had better turn their numbers around or else get out. And he claims to be reasonably clear in his own mind that the speech is a waste of time, because “A loser is a loser.” In other words, if you guys were going to perform you’d already be performing instead of sitting around krechtzing and making excuses. You’re not going to make it in sales. Leave.
TLP’s recurrent theme is narcissism, so he broadens the application of the scene past merely sales. Don’t feed yourself a story about “who you really are” when it flies in the face of reality. Don't tell yourself, “Well my day job is XYZ – just to pay the bills – but in my heart I’m a writer and as soon as I can get some money ahead I’ll quit my job and start writing.” The answer, of course, is “So what have you already written?” Because the only way to be a writer is to write. (Ursula LeGuin makes the same point with light humor and a lot less belligerence in her essay, “Talking about writing”.)
So what about me? Do I “define myself” [awful phrase] by my day job? Hell, no. As you all know far too well, I think of myself as some kind of freelance intellectual or workaday philosopher. But that’s certainly not how I earn my living. D once commented on this too, saying, “Hosea, I sometimes think you spend 95% of your time hiding.” She pointed out that I am cheerful and pleasant to people, but in a way that keeps them at arm’s length; she added that that my work is just a role I put on in the morning instead of being something integral to me (as being a teacher is integral to her); and she wondered aloud what my life would be like if I ever stopped hiding and simply chose to become who I am.
Why don’t I follow her advice? Do I really prefer beguiling myself with narcissistic fantasy to living in the real world?
It’s not that, exactly. It’s rather that – long before I ever saw the movie – I worried that “a loser is a loser.”
For a long time my father told himself he was an actor, even while he worked at a number of other careers including professor and businessman. He’d be in every show the local community theater put on; he’d play summer stock; and honestly he was (and is) pretty good. Then finally, when he was about the age I am now, he had the opportunity to devote himself full-time to acting. He didn’t need to go to an office, he didn’t need to answer to anybody else, his time was his own to spend on his art. And he pissed it away. He squandered time on any number of stupid projects that went nowhere. He sat around and read. He dreamed … the way he dreamed when he still had to go to work, the dreams he was supposed to be realizing now. And yes, he got some small parts here and there. He made a couple of commercials from which he still gets residuals. But he never became the next Lionel Barrymore. Hell, he never even became the next Danny DeVito (which is more the type he would have been playing). When he didn’t have an external structure imposed on his life from the outside, he didn’t have any structure at all. And what he accomplished was not much.
This is why I have always wanted to make sure I work for somebody else: self-employment holds no charm for me. This is why I never want to strike out on my own, seeking fame and fortune as … well, whatever the hell it is I think I am. Because I think it won’t happen. The reason we celebrate great successes, after all, is that they are rare. I know I can piss away my time every bit as unprofitably as my father did; comes the weekend, I can watch myself do it. And there is a kind of comfort in working for somebody else, even doing something kind of dull and meaningless, because that means somebody else will make me get out of bed in the morning.
It may be hiding, but I fear the alternative. And I do not have the confidence that I can overcome my own impulses towards frittering and lethargy.
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