Ever suck at what you’re doing?

Of course you do. We all do! We sign up for things we don’t start. We start things we don’t finish. We end up somewhere and look around with no idea how we got there.

Maybe you moved to a neighborhood where everybody is way richer than you and has a fancier car. You took a job at a company where everybody speaks in codes you don’t understand. You got married and had a child with someone you’re not sure you like. We make mistakes. Part of living is putting ourselves in new situations but sometimes these situations are wildly uncomfortable or end badly. Sometimes you just want to press the eject button and blast off to Mars.

That’s how I felt for much of my time at Harvard. I respected the school, I was wowed by the professors, I loved my classmates, but I just didn’t relate to the careers I saw grads heading toward. Why would I want to sit in a windowless boardroom helping a rich company get richer by telling them how to fire ten thousand people? Why would I want to help two companies merge just to satisfy some billionaire CEO’s ego? Why would I want to slave away on a marketing team desperate to sell the world more air fresheners?

These jobs made no sense!

But then again… they paid so much money. If the world is built on gears and cranks, a lot of these jobs were spinning them. I felt I wanted the lifestyle the school was leading me toward but at the same time it didn’t make sense to me.

This is the context when I heard a story from Dean John McArthur that resonated deeply and which I think about everytime I’m trying to get stronger.

Let me share it now.