The Proper Task

I left town this week to visit a friend who goes to grad school at a school with a top ten law school.  I met some of the students at a party, and I can’t get over how much of the time I spent talking to them I spent bellowing the flames of my insecurity.  I couldn’t really talk to them as people because all I saw of them was competition for internships.

I’m back at school now and–suprise surprise–I can’t sleep.  I am thinking about how I don’t really like to talk to people anymore, and wondering if I should be worried.  Maybe, though, it has to do with all this comparing.

Over and again, I read or hear that comparing oneself with others makes for unhappiness, and so I let my mind trail off to what it might be like if I just let go and didn’t compare.  I am  snapped back to my insecure thoughts by the reality of the job search.

The fact seems to me to be that the whole job market is all about comparing, and I must constantly compare myself with others to make sure I am keeping up. Maybe this is too deterministic, and maybe one can not compare oneself with others while at the same time be compared with others and not have it bother him.   Maybe.  I’d like to know.  If you have achieved this, please comment!

I am still not doing school work. Instead, I’m reading about why American’s eat too much. I found this article from Harvard Magazine.

“In some ways, you can see obesity as the tip of the iceberg, sitting on top of huge societal issues,” says Willett. “There are enormous pressures on homes with both the husband and wife in the work force. One reason things need to be fast is that Mom is not at home preparing meals and waiting for the kids to come home from school any more. She is out there in the office all day, commuting home, and maybe working extra hours at night. This means heating something in the microwave or hitting the drive-through at McDonald’s. There really is a time issue—people do have less time. Yet, look at the number of hours spent watching television. Somehow we’ve lost an element of creativity and control over our lives. All too many people have become passive.”
The Way We Eat Now, Craig Lambert, Harvard Magazine

I just watched The Wicker Man on HBO.  Now if that isn’t the picture of a male nightmare of a female-dominated society, I don’t know what it.