“Do you know that part on your resume where they ask if you have any special skills? Well, it’s the thing where they ask you to list like, ‘yoga, Spanish, water skiing, Photoshop.’ I feel like I don’t I have any special skills.”
What exactly is it most employers are looking for?
For many people the obvious answer would be the right skills and the right work ethic. However, contrary to the theories of Ockham, it seems extremely unlikely in this case that the most obvious answer is the right one. It’s that same kind of feeling that niggles at you when you hear words like inflammable. Your mind keeps telling you it means it’s NOT flammable, and then the cold realization hits you like a snowball. You wipe the ice from your face and you realize you have just pondered that when, really, there are far better things to be getting on with. Maybe that’s what employers are looking for; people who don’t get stuck in shamanic like trances every time some petty quibble about the right use of language pops into your mind. Your mind can often be like a skillet of heated popping corn, but you can’t concentrate on each piece of corn. Otherwise it might burn, or you might suddenly realize you can’t be bothered with popcorn anymore. You might even realize that using ridiculous metaphors to try and exemplify something that didn’t really need explaining was a waste of time.
But, when working a tedious job, such as one in a shop maybe, it’s hard not to day dream. Escapism has been with us since the dawn of time, be it cave paintings, the camp fire stories of old or the moving pictures of new. The fact of the matter, it seems to me, is sometimes people like to just … forget where they are. It’s nice to think you could just pry open the birdcage, and be free to fly around the inside of your imagination for a bit, whatever that consisted off. But just as that bird takes flight, reality loads up the shotgun and blasts it out of the sky with some impressive, Olympic medal worthy skeet shooting. Bang, bang. The bird is left wounded, attempting to recover. And when it opens it’s eyes again, there is a human face looking back at you, asking whether you stock a certain type of apple or where the cornflour can be found. People don’t ask these sort of questions in my world, you think to yourself, my world isn’t this trivial. And then you remember that, actually, for now, it is exactly that trivial. You might start to feel as if your wings have been clipped, and you feel as grounded as a retired jet fighter in a junkyard.
When reading of old explorers and authors and particularly philosophers, one escapes with the wonderful notion that these people were, if not paid, then at least allowed to do exactly this. Their bird roamed the skies endlessly, looking for something different every time. The veil between reality and imagination is not as thick as some people may have you believe. After all, if one were to agree with Descartes, reality is subjective insofar as one can only really assume his own existence as long as he is thinking. One man’s imagination is another man’s reality, be it depraved or enlightened. You could try and bring some excitement and creativity into the previously mentioned job, but you might feel akin to George Michael in a car; it’s only a matter of time before you hit a brick wall. Admittedly that metaphor was cheap, but the point is somewhat valid, if not slightly degraded by the negative sentiment of the idea.
Still, who needs imagination and excitement right? As long as the money’s right.
EifionJones 