I spent most of yesterday at the National Job Fair where my company had a booth. Usually a busy event, yesterday saw almost 4 times the regular number of job seekers. All morning long I listened to folks tell me about how they had been working for 20, 30 years and were now laid off. By the time my colleague came by to relieve me, I was almost as desperate as the 1000s of job seekers.
WHAT WAS I THINKING????? - was the primary line running through my head. The whole world is going to hell in a hand basket, the global job market SUCKS and new opportunities are rarer than healthy food at MacDonald's.... and here I am blithely thinking about chucking my very nice, very well paying, very comfortable SECURE job and heading off into the unknown. I was a mental wreck for the rest of the day.
And then, when I got home at night I was randomly surfing channels and chanced upon the pilot of a new show on ABC. "Cupid" is about a 30s something guy claiming to be the Roman god of Love. Currently stripped of his powers, must somehow unite 100 couples before he can return to Mount Olympus. The pilot was about how he was trying to help a young musician from... yes, you guessed it - Ireland who'd come to New York in search of a girl he'd met holidaying in Ireland. They'd had a brief chance interaction, but the young man was convinced that this was the girl of his dreams. Long story short, the guy finds the girl, but realises that she's not the one after all and that its been this other girl who actually did a story on him and got him the publicity that he needed. Thanks to the publicity though, immigration catches up with him and he's forced to leave the US. Cupid catches up with the girl (the actual love) and tries to convince her to go to him in Ireland to which she says "I've got a life here. A job. A family. My friends. What's out there other than the unknown and a mere chance at happiness?"
But she does go. Drops everything - job, life, friends - everything. And we'll never really know what happened because that's not how TV dramas work.
And as crazy as it sounds, I went to bed peaceful. Yes, its just a silly TV show (which probably won't make it past the first few episodes). Actual love stories rarely have that kind of fairy tale ending. Still, it was hard to ignore the obvious parallels in story line; it was too close to my truth.
I snuggled down to sleep finally at peace after a long and agitated day calm in the realization that even the slightest CHANCE at happiness is better than a lifetime of not knowing.
My dreams were peaceful that night.
WHAT WAS I THINKING????? - was the primary line running through my head. The whole world is going to hell in a hand basket, the global job market SUCKS and new opportunities are rarer than healthy food at MacDonald's.... and here I am blithely thinking about chucking my very nice, very well paying, very comfortable SECURE job and heading off into the unknown. I was a mental wreck for the rest of the day.
And then, when I got home at night I was randomly surfing channels and chanced upon the pilot of a new show on ABC. "Cupid" is about a 30s something guy claiming to be the Roman god of Love. Currently stripped of his powers, must somehow unite 100 couples before he can return to Mount Olympus. The pilot was about how he was trying to help a young musician from... yes, you guessed it - Ireland who'd come to New York in search of a girl he'd met holidaying in Ireland. They'd had a brief chance interaction, but the young man was convinced that this was the girl of his dreams. Long story short, the guy finds the girl, but realises that she's not the one after all and that its been this other girl who actually did a story on him and got him the publicity that he needed. Thanks to the publicity though, immigration catches up with him and he's forced to leave the US. Cupid catches up with the girl (the actual love) and tries to convince her to go to him in Ireland to which she says "I've got a life here. A job. A family. My friends. What's out there other than the unknown and a mere chance at happiness?"
But she does go. Drops everything - job, life, friends - everything. And we'll never really know what happened because that's not how TV dramas work.
And as crazy as it sounds, I went to bed peaceful. Yes, its just a silly TV show (which probably won't make it past the first few episodes). Actual love stories rarely have that kind of fairy tale ending. Still, it was hard to ignore the obvious parallels in story line; it was too close to my truth.
I snuggled down to sleep finally at peace after a long and agitated day calm in the realization that even the slightest CHANCE at happiness is better than a lifetime of not knowing.
My dreams were peaceful that night.
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