Ralph Swimer had advertised in the Hackney Gazette for a Bookkeeper to Trial Balance but each applicant who turned up for interview bluntly refused the job when offered. He was glad, finally, to sneer me, a well-qualified young woman in her early thirties. At last, old man Swimer must have thought, I have found in this Mrs Pettigrew a dedicated and conscientious workhorse who would stay the course.

Not me, but my lookalike, model Naomi Sims (1960s)

I was a pretty young-thing then: well groomed, educated and elegant, if a little too proud for my own good. But he would handle that pride with typical Romanian kid gloves, at least, until he had endeared himself to me. Since I was recently separated from my husband and a single-mother, too, that also would earn him some mileage. He would generously offer to pay me partly off the records and under the table–untaxed–cunningly disguised as a little more in my hand each week as well as a sincere attempt to help me make ends meet. In that way, he would not only avoid some national insurance contributions from his struggling business, but he would also not have to reveal exactly how much he had reluctantly agreed to pay this schvartze woman, whom he naturally assumed could not get a job anywhere else.

I had driven a hard bargain, and it would not do to upset his future English employees with revelations on the books about how much more than them I was earning. He knew that he would have to employ some English staff, and soon. The British would be far more successful at selling to the good old English public than he could ever be with his Jewish background and Eastern European accent, and he might as well start preparing his business for them from now. “After all, you’re here now, Rona,” – he had started calling me ‘Rona’ instead of Verona almost immediately – and it was my job now to cut costs, and help him expand his business, exponentially.

John Hazel, a boxer; Harold Wilmot; and John Richards, a carpenter, arriving at Tilbury aboard the Empire Windrush, 22 June 1948.

Unknown to Ralph Swimer, I had been offered another job nearby, and Mr Abrahams of Davis and Field was a real gent. His sole female employee, however, was a proper nasty piece of work. She did not think that I was the sort of person whom she wanted to use the same toilet that she sat on. And while Mr Davis did everything reasonably in his power to provide alternative facilities for me, I had objected to this English woman’s attitude, stating, “If I am good enough to do the firms’ books of accounts, then I am good enough to use the same lavatory used by the likes of you.” Davis, of course, would not sack his own relative and long-time employee, and so I walked out.

That was why it had taken me a whole week before I could pluck up enough courage to start working at 22 Whitechurch Lane. I had given Swimer some sorry story about being too sick to come in to work, but in reality, I did not want to be employed in such a rundown environment. My husband’s car, just a year before in 1965, had been far superior to Swimer’s Austin Cambridge and my former home at 32 Hartley Road had been a dwelling of which anyone would have been proud. Now with my marriage in tatters, and a young mouth to feed, I was forced to accept any old foolish job these people had to offer.

At Whitechurch Lane and Goulston Street, I had to hide from anyone I knew just to use the public toilets at Aldgate East station because there were no staff facilities at the office. Later, when I was going into Goulston Street in Whitechapel, then in the centre of the Jewish East End, if I met anybody I knew, I walked around the block to lose them, then walked back into the dilapidated shop front, hopefully, without being spotted. Like any other employee, I thought that as the company grew, I would grow with it. From a turnover of fifty-six thousand in 1965; seventy thousand in 1966; it went to seven hundred and fifty thousand in 1973; and I was the only office staff, apart from an invoice clerk. Whoever would have thought that there was so much money to be made in trimmers and trimmings, buttons and zips?

Goulston Street from Brunswick Buildings, 1960s.

They did not start out well-to-do of course. Ralph Swimer’s father was a Rabbi, I believe, and his mother, whom I met, looked like some kind of peasant woman. We had an advert out for a cleaner and she just happened to choose that time to visit her son. Mr Grant came to my office and told me that there was someone in the lobby for the cleaning job, but that she looked too old, and I simply dismissed it. Shortly afterwards, Mr Swimer brought this woman round and said, “Mrs P, this is my mother,” and with mouth wide opened, I looked at the woman and somehow managed to stutter, “Very…p-p-pleased to meet you.” She was indeed a surprise. I had heard about her from Bright, the chap who did odd jobs for them in Highgate, and on seeing her, I could believe the things he had said. And just to imagine that she was Sue and Peter’s grandmother. The difference, you see, between a black worker and a ‘white highflyer’ is the fact that we would never have allowed our mother to go about looking impoverished in that way.

When I left for two years after the son, Peter, took over and was invited back part-time in 1975, they had still not done what I had suggested they do to improve the accounting system years before. They would not listen. As long as they had workhorses like me, they used them mercilessly. I was dealing with six hundred invoices each month without the aid of a computer, most of them for one “special” firm, J. H. Smith & Company (Leyton) Limited. Their director, a Mr Sydney Caplan, used to own the company but sold it to a larger business. Caplan still did all the buying and had the Swimers jumping to his beck and call. In one month, he could have three hundred invoices. As he paid fifty times more than anyone else did, everyone was dancing to his tune and jumping at the sound of his voice.

Of course, I ended up with the unnecessarily heavy workload that meant I often had to take work home—depraving my two children of their mother’s attention because, by then, I had sent for my young son and brought him back to England—and now had an extra mouth to feed. But all Swimers had to do was use delivery notes each time Caplan phoned in with an order and then copy them onto an invoice later. In that way, they would have double records, but they did not like double records. If records were to be kept, then records would have to be checked, and some records would simply have to disappear–there was nothing anyone could do about it. False fires occurred. And the Government, run by some of their own people, did not seem to have the common sense to insist on back up records to ensure that revenues could be collected to keep much-needed public services running. That was why people like them built their businesses in areas around where they lived, and then moved out, leaving the buildings to rot for tax purposes.

They were the sort of people that Margaret Thatcher worshipped. She thought that because people got rich by trade that they made their money honestly. That may have been the case when her father had his shop in Grantham, but Mr Roberts must have been the honourable type. Thatcher may have been tapping into the aspirations of ordinary people when in 1979, she made her ‘St Francis of Assisi speech,’ but her first mistake as prime minister was to reduce the 85% tax rate to sixty per cent and the lower rate by five pence. A bold move would have been to reduce the lower rate to twenty pence thus honouring her pledge to enable ordinary people to keep more of what they earned. I did the wages and salaries at the time, and I saw the difference between the bosses rebate and that of the ordinary workers. I got a couple of pounds and was a ‘high earner’ compared to some folks.

The problem with J. H. Smith (Leyton) Limited was discovered when “the workhorse” left and their new recruit, our white former toilet and office cleaner, Joyce, had chased away the red-haired Jewish woman who did the sales ledger. By the time I was asked to return part-time, they had to get someone to help me because I had to deal with far too many invoices, and they still would not use delivery notes. Even the goods sold for cash were put on invoices.

With no accounts background, Joyce could not cope as a bookkeeper, even with a newly introduced computerised system (for which I had to pay my own training), she made so many mistakes that the accountants had to send their qualified staff to do the work that I used to do alone by hand. It was then that one Indian accountant told them what “Mrs Pettigrew has been trying to get you to do for years. If you separate cash sales from invoice sales, and use delivery notes, you will reduce the workload considerably.” The accountants, Morley and Scot, had used my accuracy to their advantage. They came twice a year to audit the books, and after the first week there was usually nothing for them to do, but they earned more in two weeks than I earned all year.

They all knew that my accounts were always 100% accurate. I checked the invoices we sent out, and the ones sent to us, and had no communications with my opposite numbers at all because there were never any discrepancies, unless of course, there was an invoice or cheque lost in the post. I was grossly underpaid, but they used the fact that the British were prejudice on racial grounds to employ me, and others like me, partly under the table and off the records at the lower end of the scale.

Brixton Riots (1981).

Most drivers who drove for firms at that time took the vans home but the black chap who worked at Swimers had to leave the van and walk or take the bus home. He got a job twice his pay and the use of the van, which was worth another forty pounds per week to him in those days. Talk about they were not racists because they employed blacks, but blacks had to work and they were usually the only employees at the lowest ends of the business, so their subsistence wages was barely enough to keep body and soul together.

My niece, Maureen, started working at Swimers at £35 a week. It was a lot more than Sainsbury’s but five years later, she was not earning much more. Joyce hated Maureen, and I knew that she would be out as soon as they had managed to get rid of me. Joyce encouraged her daughter, Lesley, to slim down to take on the new receptionist job. So, when I asked Peter for the job for Maureen, Joyce was hoping mad. She used to take note of every minute that Maureen was late getting to work. She complained about the fact that Peter gave Maureen a lift in the evenings, and after Maureen met her Greek chap, Joyce was even more jealous. She said that Maureen didn’t need the job any more, but still Maureen was taken in by her and told Joyce all of her business. She told me about Mehmet, too, but I just left them to it. Then afterwards, I bullied her into leaving, and she got a job at £75 per week, twenty or twenty-five pounds more than she was earning at Swimers.

They were supposed to have trained her by law, but they only collected the grant from the government saying that Joyce had trained her – the very idea! Joyce did not come anywhere near Maureen in intelligence. All she could do was turn around and say, “Well, I did offer to train Maureen, in office practice, filing, typing, and how to use the computer, and she had a good little handwriting and could do quite well with figures, but they claimed she wasn’t bright enough.” Her daughter, Lesley, the cleaner was bright enough though. I was furious, but Maureen did not cling to me, she clung to the white people, thinking somehow that that would elevate her. I was on my own, so I kept quiet. I could have told her that Memet would never marry her.

Maureen was just another example of how the black staff were never promoted. You were in charge as long as you were on your own. Once someone white came along, you became his or her assistant, or you had no job title but all the responsibility without the corresponding pay. All the clients and auditors knew that I was the one in charge of the accounts department at Ralph Swimer Limited throughout my twenty-odd years with the company, but I was without a name, without a title, and without sufficient remuneration. Yet I knew all that there was to know about how the business operated and how they all became multi-millionaires.

I wanted all that exposed at the industrial tribunal but I could not sell my flat to get the money to employ a lawyer to sue the bastards. Margaret Thatcher’s government had decreed that employees must not get legal aid for cases against their employers. One had to go through the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) and that was a SACA organisation run by, you know whom, for the benefit of ‘you know who.’ One entered the process and got nowhere.

As I said to them at the industrial tribunal—following my unfair dismal after two decades of devoted service to a company now managed by the son for whom I completed his university application because the family couldn’t write English well enough, and to whom my children donated their cast-offs:

“A country’s duty is to its citizens and vice versa. A country’s leaders collect taxes from the rich to run services on behalf of its entire people. Taxes are not a new thing. Joseph was on his way to pay his taxes when Mary gave birth to Jesus – and maybe there is a moral and an irony in that for everyone here today. But how can people live in a country and make their money in that country but expect their taxes to be used only in the areas in which they live? It doesn’t work that way at all. Joseph was on his way to Bethlehem to pay his taxes. He did not live there. He had to travel a long way to get there. It is obvious, therefore, that even back then; all taxes were collected at some central head office and distributed according to the needs of the various communities. Not just for the benefit and concerns of the rich folks and the areas in which they live.”

I represented myself at the hearing and that kind of feisty talk, I know now, would never get a claimant far or endear her to the panel. It was well beyond the jurisdiction of this employment tribunal and far beyond the interest of the imminent and well-appointed lawyers, barristers and judges representing the Swimers.

This is my experience, the honest to God truth of my working life in Britain, and the loss of my claim for unfair dismissal without recourse or recompense for the many years of service given to my Eastern European employers in the East End of London. It is ironic that had I received any compensation based upon my long years of service or level of pay at the time of dismissal, it would have been at a fraction of my actual earnings (or worth) over the years, since my wages were still being paid under the table and off the records—a mistake for which I take full responsibility, but it seemed like a good idea in 1966.

Now you may think that times have changed, and stories like this could never happen again in modern Britain, but ask yourself how far we have come in the labour market since the 1950s and 60s. Why are black people still at the bottom of the economic pile after all these years in England? The experience of recent African and Caribbean migrants, or even that of my British-born children/grandchildren¹ and yours, would have you know that the more things change is the more they stay the same.

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1. Recent research shows that almost half of young black people are unemployed, well over twice the rate for young white people.

1. Spot the Black MP
2. Slave Narratives: the Bedrock of Black Literature?
3. The Fall of Minister Pierre

Free: Click to Find Jobs at $80,000 to $500,000+

Undeniably, we do fall short of many a goal, dream, aspiration, desire. However to repeat the last part of the last sentence in the above paragraph, we “do not have to fail at anything.” There is nothing about us that – fundamentally – even knows how to fail! Essentially, we learn to fail. Yes, indeed it is laudable to “learn” from our so-called failures and setbacks, however the fact remains that we learn to fail by default because we “drink the kool-aid.”

Early on in our life, we begin to follow the status quo of systemic ignorance. The use of the word ignorance in this context is not derisive or insulting in the least but rather ignorance as defined as unaware. By drinking the kool-aid of our conditioning, we ignore the true, fundamental magnificent and supreme intelligence implicit in our nature. Because of the pervasiveness of this ignorance, there is a tremendous tendency to believe that the paradigm from which we live is actually the true and only paradigm of expression and possibility. Limitation must unfold in its various guises when it is from a limited paradigm. Crudely put, “garbage in, garbage out.” We don’t see what we’re looking at (in terms of the circumstances in our lives); we see what we’re looking from. In other words, if our vantage point is skewed in the first place we’re going to see (experience) things from the disadvantage of the skewed perspective.

If we are not aware of our implicit, supreme Intelligence then we doubt our capacity, doubt our ability, and doubt our possibility. Doubt is actually the culprit hiding within many of our so-called failings, fears and perceived limitations. It is not that succeeding (in love, affairs and life) is difficult so much as it is that our pursuits are so – consciously or unconsciously – informed with doubt that it undermines our capacity to successfully fulfil our intentions and aspirations.

How often are the perceived risk we take (investing retirement money in that start-up) accompanied with a sizeable dose of fear? It is not the risk itself that backfires – it is the potential-choking fear accompanying our intentions that render our actions impotent or arduous. Now, combine that doubt with a skewed perception of who you really are in the first place and you have a pretty good recipe for chronic challenge, struggle, lack or limitation. Hmmm, let’s see here, a cup of doubt, a dollop of pessimism, a half a package of ignorance of my real nature, a dash of fear (be careful with the fear – it’s a very potent ingredient!) mix well and viola! In thirty minutes, you have a fresh dish of Failure! Chef’s Note: If you let past failures bake in your mind, they become the bases for your next dish of Failure! How great is that?!

In all seriousness, you can readily create new “entrees” of fulfilment, success, prosperity, love and well-being if you use a different recipe. A recipe of ingredients that can only be found and procured in the rare regions of your fundamental magnificence and supremely intelligent nature. Let’s face it: If you don’t know what you’re (truly) working with you won’t know what you can do with it!

You are a magnificent, supremely intelligent expression of life. That statement is not in reference to what is termed your IQ or education or learned knowledge. It is in reference to the intelligence that is coordinating all the cells and functions of your body right now unconsciously, mind you – as you read this very article! Right now, no matter what may be ailing you health-wise, the implicit genius within you is still orchestrating and synchronizing trillions of cells in your body without you having even so much as a conscious idea that your body is doing so! If “you” can do this without even thinking about it, how much more difficult should something be for you to manifest that you do think about?! If, that is, when thinking about your desires you are NOT DRINKING THE KOOL-AID of consensus thinking – which must yield evidence that reflects its nature:  Worst recession in 70 years! Banks aren’t lending! Nobody’s hiring! Highest unemployment in decades! “I’m just not an outgoing person.” “I’m not smart enough.” “I wasn’t born with a silver spoon.” “I’m too old now.” “It’s not the right time.” And on and on.

So what do you do if you’re ready to put down the glass (or pitcher for some) of kool-aid? You begin the deprogramming process by understanding your true nature. You begin trading the unconsciously cherished limiting ideas of who you think you are and how you think the world operates for ideas that are akin to the essential nature of your nature, which is full of possibility. You begin not to ignore, but to deny all evidence contrary to the fundamental reality of possibility, fulfilment and true success. See all contrary evidence not as a “fact of how it is” but as a reflection of the limited license given to possibility. In other words what you deem failure or limitation is really just a very limited expression of success. You begin to understand that the limiting facts you witness in your life are nothing more than an indication of how embedded erroneous perceptions have become. The limitation you experience is the siphoning of the flow of success that erroneous perception causes and nothing more.

This understanding strips you of the hypnotic spell of lack and becomes an opportunity to mine the rich awareness of your authentic self. This is done by returning to those deceptively simple realities that, while taken for granted, are the very indications that you are more than any limited perception. Even a tree is more than a “tree”; something is causing it to grow – something is animating it, just as something is animating your body-mind right now. And, obviously, this something that is animating your body right now is supremely intelligent, creative and powerful as you consider yet again that there are trillions of cells functioning in your body presently, each carrying out specific functions simultaneously without even so much as a conscious directive or thought! The You that is animating your body-mind is an incredible force! Left up to its own devices it can ingeniously create and manifest any manner of expression that is in harmony with the essence of Nature. You are a wonder to behold!

This is the deprogramming process. This is what begins to make a way out of no way! You can begin right now to trade a conditioned idea of yourself – whatever the conditioning has been – for an authentic idea of yourself. Authentic simply means true to the real thing as can possibly be!

You are not a product of your history. You can indeed be a product of your belief that you are a product of your history, but in truth, you are not a product of what you’ve been through. You are a product of the authentic creative force that caused you to come into being as it synchronized all of the circumstances and conditions necessary for your existence! Your journey may be the means of your life but it is certainly not the essence of it.

The bottom line is that there is an incredible, transcendent Intelligence that is the locus (essence) of your identity and being. Recognize that it IS incredible. Recognize that it IS transcendent. Recognize that it is supremely intelligent and most of all recognize that it is YOU! You then default to this point of reference for every endeavour, desire, seeming problem and vision that you deign to carry out. Stand up and be your own salvation. You are the success you’ve been waiting for.

1. What Are You Listening to?
2. Asking the Right Questions to Feed Your Potential

How many times do you find yourself with as long a To-Do list at the end of the day as you started with in the morning–and yet you have been busy all day?

Time management is closely related to attainment of goals – in fact, goals are sometimes defined as dreams with timelines. Goals can be either short or long term, so how you use your time determines how well you achieve them.

Here, I will share with you three simple tips you can use to better manage your time. By applying these tips, you will be able to get through your To-Do lists more efficiently, and therefore get to your long term goals faster.

1. Know Where You Are Losing Time

To know how to better manage your time, it’s imperative that you know where you are losing it. Map out your daily activities. Where do you lose the most time? It may be in your commute, your meetings, your meal options or even just socializing. If there is an activity you can cut back on without compromising on quality, do it. Use the time that you have freed up to do something that you enjoy and that contributes directly to your goals e.g. have a shorter lunch break and focus on sending out applications for your dream job or build on a specific skill.

2. Prioritize Tasks

Sometimes, in the rush of things, we realize that we have spent more time on things that are urgent at the cost of things that are important. Learn how to tell apart the urgent from the important. Most of the things you have to do are urgent but how many are important? Ideally, you should spend more and more time focusing on important issues as compared to urgent issues.

3. Delegate When You Can

It is human nature to feel that if we do something ourselves, we have done it better or faster. This may or may not be true, but people who are the most efficient in using their time have also learnt to let go and delegate. Can you let someone else make breakfast while you learn a new language for your next job? Delegating not only frees up time, but allows those you delegate to build their skills and eventually, you can rely on them more and more.

Managing your time well is a process; you cannot master it in one day, but with these 3 tips to guide you, you are well on your way!

No related posts.

I remember. Senior year I watched you rally, heard you singing, saw your plays — and wondered how you artists, bards, and activists were faring. I saw you at the Career Services office, working your ways through massive grant guides. I met you at the Q&A on P&G then on TFA. I heard you with the law school adviser, balking when she asked, “Why law?” (I was waiting outside). Three years on, I fear for your (our) kind.

The trouble it seemed/it seems is this: we don’t know where we’re going. Our personal passions, as potent as they are, do not give rise to prepared professions. Our myriad talents do not seem to converge upon one — or more importantly: one lucrative — career. As such, we’ve lapsed into months-long lamentations about our accursed lack of direction.

It hasn’t always been this way. We used to be mechanically motivated — overachievers of the surest sort. Our four-point program, The Plan, was this: to graduate college, work for a year, get a professional degree, ascend to World Dominance. Never we mind the obvious: that we never defined what World Dominance entails. “Rule the world” (or save it) was a perfect answer for all who asked:

What do you want to do after you graduate?

The question has become more of an accusation than an inquiry of late. For, in a startling, unsettling turn of events, we don’t have any plans. Somewhere between our first day at college and our last corporate interview things fell apart. The goals we finished high school with (First Lady-President! Next Michael Jordan! Find cancer’s cure!) are fading away. In their absence we must decide what we truly want to do – and are discovering that we don’t (that we never did?) know.

The I-bank/Law school/Med school Model of Success presents three options:

1) To make lots of money now.
2) To go to professional school now and make lots of money later.
3) To make lots of money now then go to school and make even more money sooner.

In desperation almost, we’ve begun to subscribe to this Triumvirate Version of success. We artists and actors have begun to think that maybe banking is not so bad. Consulting has become a seductive lesser of evils, second only to the catholicon that is Law School.

It’s the validation sticker we’ve worn for years to explain (or excuse) our interests. When people ask, “What are you studying?” our answer has always been two-fold. First, the program (“History,” “Theater”) and then the plan: “But I’m going to law school.” How quickly the confusion (“American Studies?!”) gives way to “Aha!”’s of comprehension.

Of course, now that the day is upon us we must appraise the master plan. The most fickle among us (myself included) seek solace in the Apply and Defer Approach. Gifted scholars, dancers, teachers, poets — we know we don’t want to be lawyers. But in the name of appeasing parents, perceptions, and Pell Grants, we log onto LSAC.

A word. If you:

a) Are going to law school because you aren’t going to medical school,
b) Are going to law school because “it just comes next,” or
c) Imagine law school as an extension of your liberal arts education,

please do reconsider. Going to law school with no interest in legal practice is much like fulfilling all the pre-med requirements without any inclination to become a doctor. Unless you truly adore math and science you’d have worked too hard for too little. No less than Organic Chemistry, Civil Procedure is too dense to be done as an option-opening exercise. Misguided are we who envision a PoliSci playground for polymath and public servant alike. Like an amplified version of vocational training law school is designed to prepare professionals for their practice. The refinement of an English vocabulary is a side-effect not an objective of legal education. Consider: HLS “Second-year Basic Courses”1 are: Accounting, Constitutional Law, Corporations and Taxation. If two or more seem tedious, perhaps law’s not for you?

Or perhaps it’s the money that piques your interest, as it did mine; frankly, as it does mine. $100,000 would relieve my proud mother of my myriad loans in a matter of months. But those six-figure salaries are awarded primarily to starting associates in Corporate Law. If you are opposed on principle to the professional manipulation of money, your Benz is a long time coming. So it goes for those who seek reprieve in financial services. We (especially the “we” with debt) have grown weary in The Struggle. When everyone else was doing it, being broke seemed enlightened. But the recession has rubbed all the rugged charm off of structural unemployment. As the debts add up and our twenties wind down, temporary tedium seems worth the tender.

But I wonder. What is the difference between the investment banker and the twenty-first century sharecropper? Instead of other men’s land he tills other men’s money. He rises at the crack of dawn and works to the point of exhaustion, planting and growing the “crop” of those richer than he. At the end of the season he gives the landowner (not to mention the landlady) the bulk of the harvest, keeping a minute fraction for himself. It doesn’t seem right.

I understand that there are those of you whose motives transcend the money. Some of you find the thrill of the trade as appealing as the paycheck. Others find inspiration in the financing of dreams, in funding for your families. I’m thinking of a friend who truly enjoys economics, another who has promised to put cousins through college. For them a means-to-an-end mentality may render fulfilling the jobs they choose. But what of us, we seeming martyrs, whose real passions lie elsewhere? Can we compensate with 80K incomes what we lack in inspiration? Is happiness so cheap?

I am neither rich nor naïve and understand that recent grads must eat. I understand also that anything done solely for money will ultimately compromise the soul. I am speaking to you creative geniuses whose works adorn most college campuses. I am writing to you educated activists who want to open youth centers, create AIDS foundations, reform hometown schools, write books. Who told you that i-banking and law school are the only two paths to fulfilling your dreams? Have you asked yourselves, as confusing as it is: what do I want to do this fall? Can you ask yourselves, as hard as it is: am I in it for the money? Will you dare yourselves, as risky as it is, to do the work you’ve been called to?

I am talking to you — to you secret garden songbirds who sing in the bathrooms of your investment banks; to you poets and aspirant playwrights who write too well to stop to write the law; to you consultant-cum-clandestine thespians who will never know peace if you leave theatre alone: you say you don’t know what you want to do and maybe you don’t — but don’t you? There are only so many things you don’t mind getting up at 5 am to do. There are only so many talents that come to you as easily as breath. Understand this. There is something so challenging/exhilarating/promising about the possibility of experiencing/enjoying/employing your talents for all they’re worth. Even if it turns out that your writing is not worth $100,000/year; even if it turns out that your cooking is not worth $100 — perhaps it’ll turn out that your own sense of fulfillment is worth so much more?

Or perhaps I’m being idealistic? I offer no concrete alternatives to the professions I’ve critiqued, not least because I struggle each day to find them. It is a woman — young, poor, passionate — who pens these pearly things to you; who claims: your fulfillment has less to do with your career choice than with the (true) motive behind it. If you don’t know where you’re going, let your passions point the way. If you cannot answer: “what are you doing next year?” perhaps you might start with “what makes me happy?” Your apprehensions may become immaterial in the face of the fulfillment this answer can bring.

Last week I ended my marriage of convenience with Corporate Glory to pursue a long-term love affair with Art. A friend, apprised of the divorce, left Letters to a Young Poet outside my door. He inscribed the inside cover with this: “I know you have elected to create as most do not, and for such I know no truer lines.” Leaving off questions of age and entitlement (what, in the end, has one twenty-something-year-old to say to another?) I want to compel you young and drifting to pursue as professions your personal passions.

Rainer M. Rilke can tell you far more than I about living a life in the name of your forte. I’ve conjoined a few of his passages, replacing with brackets ([ ]) the words write and writer. Put in those brackets whatever it is you believe/fear to admit you are called to do. If it is acting, insert “act;” if it is “working with children,” add that. Then take these words (amended for you) and confront that weighty question.

What do you want to do after you graduate?

You may find, as it’s said, that you stand on the verge of great decisions — not easy ones.

Rilke writes:

I know no advice for you save this: to go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must [ ]. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be a [ ]. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what recompense might come from the outside .

Nobody can counsel you, nobody. There is only one single way . . . Search for the reason that bid you [ ]. This above all – ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I [ ]? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if the answer should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple, “I must,” then build your life according to this necessity.

1. The TakeOff – Inspiring Young People to Play Sport