Your friends and relations may experience joy for you or envy but chances are you are experiencing a complex of things - among them approval. You’re on the track and, furthermore, you’re doing well.

At first, and for a while, life has purpose and you are running with the wind. It may not occur to you, for some time, that the prescription for continued success will excise a price you may be unwilling to pay.

Success is not feeling, it is a state of social grace. It’s an adjustment to the expected and once you’ve got it, it’s also got to you.

Cases in Point

Years ago, she was one of the lucky ones who found a career where her interest and talent mingled with economic viability. She was ahead of the game. She set her course, envisioned a life-style and guess what - she’s there. Well actually, it’s a stretch.

Lifestyles seem to cost more these days than they did when the plan began. Who knew that good child care would cost $500 a month, for example?

So the bar gets raised for what’s needed to get and to keep that lifestyle. How many hours of work and management will it actually take to hold the fort? Mind you, she’s striving and proud of her life. But she’s also often anxious and feels alternately guilty. Where’s the limit? What’s enough? Where does the style of life buck up against the quality of daily living?

Samantha knows she needs to reevaluate. It feels risky - so much at stake. But the anxiety is a spoiler. She’s exhausted and feels caught.

Bill is an attorney, in his mid thirties, has begun to earn considerable amounts of money and is "making a name for himself"- like he didn’t get one when he was born.

He’s at work at 7 in the morning, and is rarely home before 9 at night. His wife, also a lawyer by training, understands his circumstances and has given up her work to stay home with their new baby and young son. But she’s telling me that she and Bill had agreed before the kids, that parenting was a two person responsibility. Where is he? she asks. "I know what he’s up against at work, but what about me?"

Bill says he’s caught in a net like a fish.

George the investment banker is single. Hasn’t really had time to look away from his computer screen long enough to maintain a long term relationship. His reward along with financial security is boredom and an underlying depression.

What’s going on here? The American dream gone astray? Is this another 90’s thing?

Every generation has understood that we need to earn our way, but these times do seem to be burdened with excess homage to Wall Street.

There's tremendous support in society for acquisition and an ever increasing validation of the work ethic that’s money-oriented.

Have we lost the balance in overvaluing what money can buy? Because it’s quite clear that it can’t buy the relationships that matter most, like watching your kids grow up, or the intimacy between partners that makes life sweet. Those things take times of undivided attention and high level contact. We are running so fast, just to keep up, we haven’t taken time for value clarification. The community support and validation blindsides us.

Each age and each decade of life comes with a social prescription - the local narrative about what we’re supposed to be and do and produce and think.

It’s our responsibility to get conscious one way or another and take the risk, to question the path. Otherwise we may find ourselves looking back at age 60, wishing we’d done some original thinking before age 40 - had taken the chance and left that career that had turned cold or the town we hated - had been willing to spend the time and money to get clear and honest, to lay some fresh tracks to travel closer to our original purpose and intention, closer to our passion.

Validation for doing the unexpected is hard to come by; but staying stuck or trapped can make a person sick or bitter or both. Go for prevention. The cure is much harder.

Elaine Z Mosher PhD

The cases in point which appear in this column do not represent any particular individual or couple, but are a composite representation of people with relevant life issues. Similarities with actual people are coincidental.

©1999 Elaine Mosher

Cases in Point: Archive