Unemployment ≠ failure

Unemployment ≠ failure

Unemployed when I grow up

‘What would you want to be when you grow up?’. Many of us are familiar with this question. I doubt that anyone ever answered that they want to be ‘unemployed’ when they grow up. Though I got my dream job travelling and seeing the world just after graduating from university, it had its down sides. It did not take long for me to realize I had to leave soon. I planned my job transition, even picked a country I wanted to work in, and I went there on a job hunt. My hopes turned into a nightmare when no one would hire me. I was only supposed to be unemployed for a few months, but after piles of rejected applications and updated CVs/Resumes, I realized that I may be unemployed for longer than I had planned to be.

Educated for unemployment

I realized that the education system I was subject to, taught me how to be a great employee and not much more. This is great if you have a great employment rate in the country, but if unemployment is rampant, that kind of system will only churn out idle hands. I walked into a world that needed to be agile, and I did not have the tools or skills to adjust.

Accepting unemployed reality

It was a hard journey to get to a place of acceptance. Not only was I hard on myself, but people close to me were hard on me too. Some thought I was lazy and a wasted investment. Whenever something happened to starkly remind me I had no income, my mental health would get worse. I found myself sliding deeper and deeper into a depressed state. It did not take long for me to start locking myself in my room and not leaving. I stopped watching what I eat, stopped exercising and stopped improving myself in any way.

Thou will find a solace there

One place of solace for me was reading. I read so many books, but none more than the Bible. I became a dedicated student of the Bible. The change in me was so gradual that I cannot even point to a specific moment of epiphany. One thing I remember determining in my mind was that unemployment was not going to define me. I had to remind myself that as long as I am alive, and my brain works, there was always a chance that I would get back up again. Maybe not in the near future, but some day.

Wheel of life

In my reading, one of the statements that had a huge impact on me is in Ecclesiastes:

Again I saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, or the battle to the strong, or bread to the wise, or riches to the discerning, or favor to the skillful; rather, time and chance happen to all of them.

Ecclesiastes 9 verse 11 CSB

That statement, time and chance happen to all, is different in other translations. Some translations say you have to be at the right place at the right time, some say bad luck happens to all.

I just saw it all as a wheel. In my language, we often say ‘hupenyu ivhiri’ which translates to, life is a wheel. Just as every part of a wheel takes turns to be up, down or to the side, so life goes. Some may prefer to look at life as hills and valleys, sometimes you are up and sometimes you are down. Same thing. You will have up-seasons and down-seasons in life. Life in the up-season and down-seasons is equally life. Moreover, as long as you are alive, some principles will always apply. For instance, sowing and reaping or cause and effect. And the present is no different, it is an opportunity to plant into your future.

Living unemployed

Given the above, I decided that I was going to improve myself. It became a motto of mine to learn something new each year. Bearing in mind how miserable I was at some of the jobs I had worked before, and I did not want to spend my life in misery. In my research I discovered that on average more than half of us spend one third of our lives at work, yet approximately 80% of people hate their jobs. I wanted to do what I love for a living, or at the very least something related to what I love. So I decided to note things I would love to learn.

As a versatile individual, I do not only have one thing that I love and enjoy thus I had a whole list. I decided to note what I love, and the skills I need to learn. I will elaborate more on this in my next blog

Take away

You cannot allow your failure to get a job, mess with your sense of value. In this current world we are living in, there are too many factors at play for you to define yourself by unemployment. A great lesson is how the 2020 pandemic has affected unemployment rates all over the world. So many people are now unemployed, and it has nothing to do with them personally. However it often feels like you are a failure because you do not have a job. To that I say, you are not the sum of your feelings. As long as you are alive and you have a brain, you can still do something.

To be continued….