Unemployment Again
This post may be a bit of a rant.
I hate this topic and that it always comes up. The topic is unemployment. Traveling for a month and a half, I've slowly started to let go of my beliefs concerning working and career. I have started to shed old notions of what you are supposed to do and how you are supposed to do it.
What you are supposed to do is listen to your family and your school when you are choosing a profession. You are allowed to deviate a little but not a lot. Like, if your parents want you to become a doctor, it is socially acceptable to become a vet or maybe a teacher. But if your parents want you to become a lawyer, it is not socially acceptable to want to be a musician.
If you are unfortunate enough to be born in a family where you are being forced to do something you don't want to do, you will probably get depressed. If you lack the self-esteem to go against your parents' and school's will, what is going to happen is that you will try to obey them, but it won't work out as you will not really be motivated. You will try to motivate yourself with drugs and other addictions and distractions but inevitably, you will fail.
If you want to go against your parents' and school's will, you might succeed if you get support from somewhere else, like friends of maybe a music teacher (if your aspiration is to become a musician). From that support you will then get strength to follow your dream even if most people are against you.
But what if you can't find the support – or worse – what if your self-esteem is so low that you are incapable to receiving support? You might succeed alone, but that requires enormous amounts of determination and strength on your part. And it will probably take years of persistence and struggle.
Yet many artists end up living exactly like this. Alone and ostricized, they only find comfort in their own art. If you have a supportive art community, consider youself very lucky. Some artists are shunned even by other artists and they end up completely alone.
*
I'm not worried about the unemployed people. I'm worried about the people who don't understand the unemployed people. Here are a few facts about this matter.
Unemployment can become anyone's reality at anytime. Even you (yes, even you) are not safe from it. People don't become unemployed, because they're bad or they did something wrong. Usually the cause is just circumstances in their field of work or the area they live in, or the economy. And just like that, you lose your job.
What did you do wrong? Nothing! It's life! It's like if your bike gets stolen. It happens. You don't have control. You're a peg in the machine.
If you are strongly identified with the job that you used to do, unemployment might feel very very bad. You might even become severely depressed.
Also, if you are strongly identified with the status or the salary that you used to get, it is not going to be easy to settle for a job with less status. It's going to feel degrading, humiliating and you probably won't want to do it. But if you are not ready to take any job that's out there, you're probably going to be unemployed for a while.
But if you think it's no big deal to downshift from being a doctor to be a medical assistant, good for you. You are probably not that identified with your job then. Realize that identification is something people don't consciously choose.
Some people get a very strict upbringing that is in complete opposition to what they want to do. Say, their parents want them to be a doctor, but they want to be an actor. Or a florist. Or a mathematician. Whatever.
These people can develop a very low self-esteem. Not only can't they be a doctor (because they don't really want to), they cannot become an actor/florist/mathematician now either! Because all they've heard their whole life is "Don't do it, you're bad if you do it. I'm not going to love you if you do it." or worse, "You owe me. You can't disobey me." This is a horrible situation, because now you're stuck. Your only option is to cut the toxic people our of your life and start building up your self-esteem again. Before you do that, you can't work at all. And this is a long process.
Some people didn't get any sort of expectations from their family at all. They weren't raised to dream of becoming something. They were raised to believe that they are inherently bad at everything, and that they cannot do anything they want to do. These people will probably have zero motivation. They won't even finish high school, because why bother? They might get easily swept up in bad company, street gangs, and hard drugs. And then they will probably die from an overdose. (I realize that I'm sounding grossly black-and-white here, but I hope you forgive my manners and can still accept the message that I'm trying to convey.)
Realize that unemployment is actually a necessary part of the system. Many people would lose their jobs if all the unemployed found work, and then they would be the new unemployed. Our system in designed in a way where unemployment is inevitable. Someone will always fall victim to it. Who? Hard to tell, but as I already said, anyone can become unemployed at anytime. The system isn't perfect.
Our education system is flawed as well. We constantly educate people who we know will not find work in their field. And then we don't let them get another education of their choice. We just basically force them to be unemployed or become enterpreneurs.
Many unemployed people would love to start a company of their own – if it wasn't so damn difficult! In Finland, you can't just start a company. First you have to resign your unemployment fee. Then you start the company (which costs you a lot of money that you don't have, by the way). Then you pay taxes (with the same money that you don't have). And only then are you allowed to try if your business idea would even generate any income!
That's insane! Who would do that? Especially if you have children and animals to feed. And before you tell me about part time enterpreneurship, you actually have to somehow prove that you're working less than ten (or something) hours a week on your business. First of all, how would you prove that? And second of all, ten hours? Are you kidding me? Impossible to start a company with just ten hours of work! As I'm working on my company, the least amount of work I do is 20 hours (that's on holiday), but otherwise I do 50-70 hours.
And before you tell me about ukko.com (I hate that company!), they ask for at least 30% or your revenue for "doing the work that you don't want to do" (taxes) – which is work that I really really want to do, by the way!
And last but not least, "'Till it happens to you / you don't know / how I feel / you won't know / it won't be real." Lady Gaga wisely sings about this problem. Be very careful when you want to judge someone. Do you really understand them? Do you really know what they have been through? Do you know their story? Probably not.
I hate this topic and that it always comes up. The topic is unemployment. Traveling for a month and a half, I've slowly started to let go of my beliefs concerning working and career. I have started to shed old notions of what you are supposed to do and how you are supposed to do it.
What you are supposed to do is listen to your family and your school when you are choosing a profession. You are allowed to deviate a little but not a lot. Like, if your parents want you to become a doctor, it is socially acceptable to become a vet or maybe a teacher. But if your parents want you to become a lawyer, it is not socially acceptable to want to be a musician.
If you are unfortunate enough to be born in a family where you are being forced to do something you don't want to do, you will probably get depressed. If you lack the self-esteem to go against your parents' and school's will, what is going to happen is that you will try to obey them, but it won't work out as you will not really be motivated. You will try to motivate yourself with drugs and other addictions and distractions but inevitably, you will fail.
If you want to go against your parents' and school's will, you might succeed if you get support from somewhere else, like friends of maybe a music teacher (if your aspiration is to become a musician). From that support you will then get strength to follow your dream even if most people are against you.
But what if you can't find the support – or worse – what if your self-esteem is so low that you are incapable to receiving support? You might succeed alone, but that requires enormous amounts of determination and strength on your part. And it will probably take years of persistence and struggle.
Yet many artists end up living exactly like this. Alone and ostricized, they only find comfort in their own art. If you have a supportive art community, consider youself very lucky. Some artists are shunned even by other artists and they end up completely alone.
*
I'm not worried about the unemployed people. I'm worried about the people who don't understand the unemployed people. Here are a few facts about this matter.
Unemployment can become anyone's reality at anytime. Even you (yes, even you) are not safe from it. People don't become unemployed, because they're bad or they did something wrong. Usually the cause is just circumstances in their field of work or the area they live in, or the economy. And just like that, you lose your job.
What did you do wrong? Nothing! It's life! It's like if your bike gets stolen. It happens. You don't have control. You're a peg in the machine.
If you are strongly identified with the job that you used to do, unemployment might feel very very bad. You might even become severely depressed.
Also, if you are strongly identified with the status or the salary that you used to get, it is not going to be easy to settle for a job with less status. It's going to feel degrading, humiliating and you probably won't want to do it. But if you are not ready to take any job that's out there, you're probably going to be unemployed for a while.
But if you think it's no big deal to downshift from being a doctor to be a medical assistant, good for you. You are probably not that identified with your job then. Realize that identification is something people don't consciously choose.
Some people get a very strict upbringing that is in complete opposition to what they want to do. Say, their parents want them to be a doctor, but they want to be an actor. Or a florist. Or a mathematician. Whatever.
These people can develop a very low self-esteem. Not only can't they be a doctor (because they don't really want to), they cannot become an actor/florist/mathematician now either! Because all they've heard their whole life is "Don't do it, you're bad if you do it. I'm not going to love you if you do it." or worse, "You owe me. You can't disobey me." This is a horrible situation, because now you're stuck. Your only option is to cut the toxic people our of your life and start building up your self-esteem again. Before you do that, you can't work at all. And this is a long process.
Some people didn't get any sort of expectations from their family at all. They weren't raised to dream of becoming something. They were raised to believe that they are inherently bad at everything, and that they cannot do anything they want to do. These people will probably have zero motivation. They won't even finish high school, because why bother? They might get easily swept up in bad company, street gangs, and hard drugs. And then they will probably die from an overdose. (I realize that I'm sounding grossly black-and-white here, but I hope you forgive my manners and can still accept the message that I'm trying to convey.)
Realize that unemployment is actually a necessary part of the system. Many people would lose their jobs if all the unemployed found work, and then they would be the new unemployed. Our system in designed in a way where unemployment is inevitable. Someone will always fall victim to it. Who? Hard to tell, but as I already said, anyone can become unemployed at anytime. The system isn't perfect.
Our education system is flawed as well. We constantly educate people who we know will not find work in their field. And then we don't let them get another education of their choice. We just basically force them to be unemployed or become enterpreneurs.
Many unemployed people would love to start a company of their own – if it wasn't so damn difficult! In Finland, you can't just start a company. First you have to resign your unemployment fee. Then you start the company (which costs you a lot of money that you don't have, by the way). Then you pay taxes (with the same money that you don't have). And only then are you allowed to try if your business idea would even generate any income!
That's insane! Who would do that? Especially if you have children and animals to feed. And before you tell me about part time enterpreneurship, you actually have to somehow prove that you're working less than ten (or something) hours a week on your business. First of all, how would you prove that? And second of all, ten hours? Are you kidding me? Impossible to start a company with just ten hours of work! As I'm working on my company, the least amount of work I do is 20 hours (that's on holiday), but otherwise I do 50-70 hours.
And before you tell me about ukko.com (I hate that company!), they ask for at least 30% or your revenue for "doing the work that you don't want to do" (taxes) – which is work that I really really want to do, by the way!
And last but not least, "'Till it happens to you / you don't know / how I feel / you won't know / it won't be real." Lady Gaga wisely sings about this problem. Be very careful when you want to judge someone. Do you really understand them? Do you really know what they have been through? Do you know their story? Probably not.
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