Agnes does not report to work

Agnes faced a conundrum: she was offered a job which she hated and which bored her, but which offered remuneration of the sort she was not likely to be offered again. Having carefully considered, she declined; whereupon the company nearly doubled the offer. Agnes underwent a week of torment: take it, or not? A job she did not want hanged over her like the sword of Damocles but everyone – except her husband – was pushing her to accept it. It would be foolish not to at your age, they said -- Agnes is middle aged -- such offer may never come again. Since I never take advice, I also do not offer. Thus I did not offer it this time, either.

In the end, Agnes refused. Well done, I said upon hearing the news. You didn’t need it, did you? (No, she didn’t. The children have left the house; the house was paid off; she liked what she was doing, even if the pay wasn’t great). Everyone else, she said, declared me mentally deranged. Everyone else, I said, is like everyone else. And I told her a story:

Europeans, with reverence for things deep, are inclined to think personal happiness trivial. Other things matter more: Bolsheviks, civilization, church, the motherland… (the list of things we have invented to justify our personal misery is quite long). Americans, a simple people, think otherwise – and research it.

Perhaps one has to be prepared to admit to being a dumb know-nothing – in other (European) words, an American – to hit upon ideas of true genius, such as: to conduct a survey of happiness and to plot the results against the time of the week. This apparently silly survey turned out ground-breaking: the unhappiest time of the week turned out to be… Saturday morning. Why? Because on Saturday mornings… people find themselves uncertain what to do. (By Saturday afternoon things generally improve: by then they have decided to mow the lawn or work on the boat and the misery of directionlessness has lifted).

The survey thus unexpectedly shed light on the importance of employment. Bosses, it turns out, are valuable in two ways. First, by paying us (and therefore making us feel that we are worth something, even if that something is measly $4.35 an hour), they give us a sense of self-importance -- a justification for existence; and, second, by telling us what to do they lift from our shoulders the heavy responsibility of deciding of what to do with ourselves.

Or should I say, them.

For I have never liked any of my jobs; and have never needed one to occupy my time. (Somehow, I always seemed to know what I wanted to do, a character trait called autotelic – “self-purpose” – personality).

And thus, this observation, like all my general remarks about humanity, seem to describe a species I do not belong to.

I am, I suppose, like Pieter Kien, the hero of Canetti’s Auto-da-fe: each time he steps out (from his windowless library) he finds himself compelled, upon return, to scribble down in his journal another observation about people’s foolishness. It’s funny; he is perhaps meant as a caricature, an imperfect man ("head without the world"); yet, he seems so... true.

PS

Several people asked to guess the results of the happiness survey have since guessed it correctly; showing that they too feel unhappiest on Saturday morning; which has never ever been the case with me. Clearly, I am an aberration.