My Place In The Sun

The psychoanalytic psychologist Erik Erikson famously theorized that life was but a series of crises in which the successful resolution of one crisis sets up the terms of the next crisis, and gives one the necessary tools in order to solve that crisis without providing the exact solution. In a sense, this is not too far different from the biblical perspective that our Christian walk is to test us in different areas, progressing as we deal with ever more serious vices and problems in our character and seek to master ever more challenging virtues. Some of our problems are universal--there is fairly wide consensus about nearly universal needs, very common desires, and certain struggles that resonate across time and across cultures. Other problems and difficulties and virtues are very unusual, in that few people know they exist, and even fewer seek to master them. We, as human beings, are in tension between the universal that unites us with others and the particular that makes us all unique and in some ways alone. Perhaps, as we are conscious and self-conscious beings, it can be no other way.

Sometime in late 2004, I became aware that something was amiss in my life, and since then I have been in what could be termed the crisis of early adulthood, trying to find one's place in the world. I was finishing my first degree, in Civil (Structural) Engineering, and had just finished my studies at the Ambassador Bible Center, both of which brought me in contact with a larger world I still feel somewhat uncomfortable with. For one, I became aware that the barriers to advancement in my chosen field(s) were quite immense. To take engineering as an example, I had serious difficulty finding an engineering job without passing the EIT/FE exam (which takes about a day, and which I did in Fall of 2005). After this one must work four years become one is eligible to become a Professional Engineer, at which point one is a real engineer, and must keep up all manner of Continuing Education Units and such in order to maintain one's position. There was always some new skill that needed to be mastered, some aspect of self-promotion (a skill I must admit I have not mastered) I needed to gain, something I was lacking in order to meet my ambitions.

I looked around me, and found that I was not alone in this struggle, but that my entire generation was being unfairly maligned for desiring a place in the sun that the generations before us had taken for granted and had denied us, leaving us to struggle in a hostile world that they had made, while they mocked us in our efforts, chastised us for our student debt and our desire for jobs that had good income and opportunities for advancement (both of which I have found difficult in my own life) mocked, as if we were not worthy of great things because we had not paid an ever-increasing and unreasonable amount of dues, all while the price of paying these dues increased and the reward for paying them decreased.

My struggle to relate to that world around me of entrenched power figures who were somewhat ignorant of my need for advancement, who wished to increase the burdens upon me without increasing the reward for bearing those burdens, and my resistance to that sort of treatment, has continued now for several years, and has included such diverse fields of conflict as my family, my workplace, and my congregation. To some extent the problem may be due to perception, but perception becomes reality, and misunderstandings form the basis of long and ugly conflicts. This is especially tragic in those cases where a simple and honest communication at the beginning may have avoided a lot of grief and suffering and anger on all sides. In any case, I have no particular ambitions to rule harshly over others, but my ambitions at any rate have been viewed by others as sometimes threatening to their own position at least, and that is not always an unfair judgment.

Moreover, I do not know how this particular crisis is to end, or when. My family has been largely a lead weigh tied around my ankle in this particular climb out of the darkness into the harsh light of day, instead of rope to help with the climb. The death of my father in early 2006 gave me a greater (if unwelcome) understanding of the gravity of the struggle I faced, being about far more than mere ambition, but even mere survival. The death of my grandmother in 2007 let me know that certain members of my family were extremely unscrupulous in how they sought their own material ambition, and the behavior of other family members has but continued this harsh judgment. The failure of my family to be more than a week reed in my times of grave trouble have had their mirrors in other struggles, such as the difficulty to find strong romantic relationships (intimacy has always been a difficult matter for me, largely because I tend to fear it even more than I long for it, most of the time at least). Seeing the mountain one has to climb is not appealing when one climbs alone without a detailed map to go by.

Perhaps, though, this struggle has been a good thing. For one, it has caused me to be much more compassionate to others, even if it has sharpened by deep sense of sarcasm at the deeply corrupt world all around me. Whether this is a good thing or not, only time can tell. Whether I will learn some patience, that most elusive and difficult of virtues for me, or maybe even learn to be a little less thin-skinned and prickly about what is going on around me remains to be seen. I have not finished climbing the mountain, so I do not see what summits remain to be reached when I finish this one. Perhaps this is but a small peak in the Appalachians, which I must master before attempting the Rockies, to say the least of the Alps or the Andes or Everest. That remains to be seen as well.