Arranged Marriage

Job hunting. When one is looking for a job, what is one looking for? Let's assume it is a long term kind of thing, so one is looking for a career. Even if one isn't looking for a career, one usually ends up with one. You have to be doing something your whole life, so what you are doing can be called your career. But let's focus on a job at a company.

Say you go in for an interview. You have maybe 5 hours of talking with people who work there. You probably have done some research on what other people say it is like to work there, but you are not them. After 5 hours, mostly with them asking you questions to prove that you are worthy to them, they might offer you a job. What will it be like if you accept? You do not know, and you really didn't have the time to find out. It is not like you can work there for a month and compare what it feels like to your current job.

Jobs are like arranged marriages. So, just go back and reread what I wrote and substitute wife (in my case). From my understanding about arranged marriages, one can go interview a group of women. You can talk with them for a bit, ask some questions, then decide if you want to be with one of them for the rest of your life based on this small intersection in time. Everyone talks about their marriages, but how will it be for you? It is not like you can try out your wife for a bit then decide how it feels compared to what you have now. Okay, so I kind of just did what I asked you to reread, but I was just trying to be helpful - though each has different aspects that are funny...

How does one make a life long decision based on such a short interval of time? It seems reasonable that one would look to green pastures and say, "Just let me take a quick romp through those fields. Maybe a quickie just to prove that I did the correct thing. Then, once I have tried it, I will know I have do the right thing, or if not, I will move on to something better for everyone involved." Yet in a job and in a marriage, both are hard to do this within the relationship. You can not test out another company without losing your job, nor can you test out another wife without losing your wife. Seems kind of silly from a certain perspective.

I personally find it very hard to understand how people do it. How do they make long term decisions without all of the facts? I know it is impossible to know all of the facts, which is why I tend to drift. Maybe people believe that they can fix any problem that comes their way? Make themselves believe that they do not need to test other waters to know that every day they are diving into the correct body for them? I do not have that certainty in my life. I question everything, including all of my decisions. Does this mean I can never experience the happiness that a long term commitment can bring? Probably. Doubt about other pastures will always drive me to test them, since there will always probably be a better one just around the corner.

The Edward