Between Either and Or April 19, 2011
Posted by Matt in philosophy.Tags: balancing life and work, Bruce Springsteen, corporations, Either/Or, Elliott Smith, Kierkegaard, work
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It was a difficult morning.
The sky was cloudy, the kids were crying, and to top it off, we were completely out of that life-giving elixir, coffee. When I finally pulled away from our babysitter’s home, running late as usual, it was with a sigh of stressful relief, knowing that a small piece of another busy day was complete, but also that time was short and the work ahead was long.
I have a good job, one that pays fairly well and has a decent amount of flexibility in the work day, but oftentimes the soulless, bottom-line philosophy undergirding every action of a corporation can wear on a person and stress becomes a fact of life. It becomes difficult to extricate oneself from the corporate machine with its overlapping deadlines, impersonal interactions, and its impassive eyes of stone that only see dollars and cents.
This morning I was scheduled to conduct a meeting at a location on the east side of the city, meaning that I would have a much longer commute that is normally necessary for my work, so before leaving town I grabbed a cup of coffee and chose an album to listen to while making the drive – Elliott Smith’s Either/Or.
As I made my way onto the crowded stretch of interstate, the melancholy sounds of an acoustic guitar and Smith’s whispery vocals filled the car and my mind started to wander. The album is of course named for Soren Kierkegaard’s book Either/Or, which talks of the inner, soul-shaking turmoil of humans between aesthetic pleasure and moral rightness, freedom and necessity, imagination and rules etched in stone.
As I drive this busy Memphis freeway I think of some of the dueling forces in my own soul, between the job that provides the income to support a family but that could easily suck away my very being, leaving behind only a shell of humanity, and the drive to do something worthwhile, to change the world for the better.
The tragic story of Elliott Smith is one where he ultimately couldn’t strike a balance in his life and succumbed to pain and anguish, dying of self-inflicted wounds at the age of 34. While I am certainly not suicidal, I see the danger in giving in and becoming just another corporate automaton whose life is defined by the bottom line.
I think of one of my favorite Springsteen songs, the poignant “Racing in the Street,” where he utters these prophetic lines:
Some guys they just give up living
And start dying little by little, piece by piece
Some guys come home from work and wash up
And go racing in the street.
That’s me. I want to go “racing in the street,” to not let my work swallow me whole, to keep my love for my fellow man intact. I want to recognize beauty and enjoy life to the fullest. As I drove the highway, passing by those numerous monuments to humankind, a beam of sunlight broke through the cloud cover, illuminating the ground around me and suddenly I knew it would be alright.
I am on the right track.
I can barely listen to Elliot anymore…I jsut get SO depressed. Great thoughts my man
I should also say that the section of lyrics from “Racing in the Street” may misrepresent a beautifully sad song about crushed dreams, but I really like those lines anyway.
“I see the danger in giving in and becoming just another corporate automaton whose life is defined by the bottom line.”
That’s one of the reasons we write, my man. We push back a little, and for a while at least, “rage against the machine.”
You’re right on, brother. This little window from my soul does me a lot of good.