Recently, an interval between degrees has put me in a challenging position of needing temporary employment to pay for bills. I have had a humbling task of having to backspace from my CV many things I have been happy about and, well, proud of. It was a strange realisation to find that I just don't qualify for most temporary jobs in the real world. It was an unexpected feeling that I simply wasn't good enough - and this was the first step to the series of events that has caused a lot of changes in me over the last few weeks. My years of research experience yielded me nothing. I realised that I am quite poorly equipped for the 'real world' outside of academia - a world where neurones, neurotrophic factors, DNA and cellular signalling have no relevance when the job that needs done is sweeping a floor or making a cup of coffee. I did get a job eventually, though due to no merit of mine, and I have worked for the last two weeks cleaning in a hotel. The experience has been painful - on my body, but more still on my ego. I have had to be faced with and deal with many character flaws and be corrected in ways and by people I never expected. I found out that everyone knows something I do not know, and most people are much better at some things than I will ever dream to be. But respect and kindness have nothing to do with skill or function, but with seeing each person as a human soul.
I have always been poor at receiving criticism. But being yelled at by superiors and guests, scolded and corrected almost constantly I realised in myself a pride of an extent I did not know how deeply rooted it was in me. The dynamics when in uniform and when out of uniform were drastically different, and that made me angry and irritated. Initially, if anyone was unkind I wanted to say 'do you think that I am uneducated? That I don't contribute to society? Well I study, I have a masters, I want to do a PhD! You shouldn't treat me like this!' But I now realise that was wrong. I do not deserve special treatment because of my education. If any anger or irritation had a right to be present it should have been because all people should be treated with kindness and respect regardless of their education or background. Whether waking up in the middle of the night to go sweep floors and scrub toilets or working overnight on a complex experiment, we are contributing to society doing jobs that have to be done. Some functions require a few weeks, others several years. But titles and prestige very often have little to do with how hard someone works, how much someone deserves anything, and often have more to do with opportunity which is entirely out of our control.
One would think I understood that before working in cleaning, especially coming from a city where many hard working people have to wake up at 4 am to get 2 or 3 hours of expensive and poor quality public transportation to work cleaning a wealthy person's house for a very small wage, and yet others receive so much prestige without working a single day of their lives (and often both are neighbours next door neighbours). But I did not. I have taken my privilege for granted so much, that I convinced myself that I 'worked hard' for the opportunities I have had in life. However, many people work very hard - much, much harder than me, with far more kindness and humbleness - and still their lives are considered 'unsuccessful' to society.
When I think back at my life, there has been hard work but there have been many things that were completely out of my control that have brought me to where I am. Yes, I studied hard to have scholarships to carry me through schooling in a reasonable school. I also worked hard to get into a good public university without fees, and to get a scholarship to study abroad, and there I studied aiming at a postgraduate course. Yes, there have been some challenges along the way in being a woman in science and being a woman in a culturally chauvinistic country. God knows I have loved highlighting all my 'hard work' on self-pittying posts about the hours spent studying, pictures of books piled on a table and have whined about 'student life' to the pain of the ears of those following my timeline during college. But any likes I received were the only 'reward' I probably receive for trying to make myself look good and hard working to my own glory. How many times have I not posted about 'blessings' and #thanksLord things I was merely being proud of and wanted to proclaim to the world with a pseudo-humble tone? However, merely being able to read and write puts me ahead of 33% of women in the world. Having access to internet to post these thoughts makes my access to information much easier than approximately 60% of the world. If I had not been born to a middle class family, if I did not have a family who loved and supported me, if my parents did not have higher education, if I were not bilingual my entire life, if I did not have a house, books, if I could not read or write, getting to where I am would be orders of magnitude more difficult. I am a product of working, but also a product of several opportunities and circumstances I have had no control over. Merit has maybe had a role, but it is not what has determined my life to be what it is.
This is what makes me most angry about feel good pseudo-philosophical statements to improve people's self esteem about 'dreaming big', 'following your heart' and how 'the key to success is hard work'. Those things may all be very true for the average middle or upper class educated young adult, but how can you say that to a malnourished child with hindered development due to poor nutrition or to a sick widow who cannot find a job to feed her multiple children?
I probably at some stage believed those statements, but the role that they played in my heart has been much darker than I ever perceived them to be. They have justified to myself that all I achieved has been due to merit and deserving - because I 'dreamed big, believed in myself and followed my heart' I have been able to pursue a career in neuroscience. This automatically made me believe that people in other less specialised jobs just didn't work hard enough in school or didn't rise to the necessary occasions. This drew a line in my heart separating me from them. And I became proud, arrogant and foolish.
Working in cleaning, meeting people that due to circumstances have had to set aside successful careers due to changes out of their control to go into non-specialised jobs has changed me. Meeting people with families, histories, pains, love and a life made me realise what a fool I have been to think that my success has in any way been due to my own effort and in any way made me better than another person than others. It seems silly, but I was reminded that at the end of the day, we are all human. There is very little control we have over our lives, and that regardless of our job, social rank, financial situation, interests and education we are all human souls with beauty, with sin, with suffering and love. At the end of the day none of those foolish labels matter. We all will be born and die, and experience some suffering and hopefully happiness in between. We will have trials of different types and dimensions. But the things that can make or break us as humans are not our circumstances or opportunities. Our 'success' has nothing to do with titles or money. What makes us have a positive impact in the world is not our bank account, our figure or our degrees - it is what we do with what we have.
Having more opportunities in life may make a life look easier from the outside. Knowing where your next meal is coming from and knowing that your shack of ply wood won't be washed away by a torrential rain suddenly before you come back from work probably sound like a good place to start in life. However, in the grand scheme of things, what are the things that matter at the end of the day? Money is spent, health fades, houses crumble and degrees lose relevance. We cannot take any of that to the grave. What really is success?
As a Christian, I believe that what really matters are the things that do last beyond this life - the things in our soul. "And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?" (Mark 8.36). I may have gained a lot in the world, but what has it done to my soul? It has made me love less those different from me, and it has made me believe that my provision and security come from my work and not from the loving hands of God. I have been living an illusion, believing in a fickle God who can provide special perks and improvements in my life, like a special membership card to life. Meanwhile, perhaps someone in very poor worldly conditions may be much more generous, kind, selfless and in fact understand the love and provision of God to a degree I may never understand - and they may be much more successful at things that really matter in life than I may ever be. It makes me wonder if the way we see it in the world is just all upside down. If what we often call blessings are not simply circumstances - circumstances which may function as blessings or as curses depending on how we approach them. One may grow in kindness having more resources, more opportunities to share, give and love. Another may grow selfish, arrogant and cold. It is not our circumstances that should determine who we are, but what we do with them. And it is not our place as humans to judge each other on success or lack thereof: kindness and respect should not be dependent on judgement. We are not told to love those we respect, we are told to love our neighbour - and that can be anyone.
Perhaps hardships and blessings are not as easy and clear cut for us to understand as we would like to think. We cannot add conditions and caveats to our love and respect towards others. Having more does not mean we are more loved or more worthy in any way or anything. It simply means our trials and lessons are different ones. If we have less, our responsibility is to not resent those who have more and learn to love them, to be generous and trust God for our provision. Having abundance makes our trials harder to see - and in a sense, may be more challenging to be spotted - but we have a responsibility to love and care for those in need and not believe ourselves better than the ones who have less. At the end of the day, we are all humans in unique circumstances. All of us are going through struggles that others don't know about. Everyone you meet knows something you don't know. And the only way to learn to truly love is by refusing the temptation of pride, and assuming we cannot understand the circumstances of another is a good place to start when wanting to judge and add exceptional conditions to 'loving our neighbour'.
I regret bitterly not understanding my privileges and taking them for granted for so many years. But more so, with shame I realise that my worldly notions of value, merit and success have corrupted my soul and built walls separating 'us' and 'them'. All I can hope is that the lessons learnt during this short time may persist, that whatever my lot I may continue to grow in love, kindness and empathy and be a better steward of all that I am given in the years to come, whether it is much or little.
One last thing I would like to leave with you is an exercise that has made me think a lot about my circumstances, privilege and how people's lives are more than meets the eye (and highlights the meaninglessness of judging another based on success). The questions of the exercise are in the video's description if you would like to see how you fit in.
