A laid-back approach to steady career track: a different take on the treadmill feel

“You Americans know entertainment but you do not know how to enjoy yourselves,” is in my
mind a memorable line from “Eat, Pray, Love,” a biographical story recently turned into a
Hollywood blockbuster starring Julia Roberts. Roberts plays a successful thirty-something
American who decides to embark on a soul-searching trip to Italy, India and Bally after realizing
her job, husband and newly bought house are not what she really wanted from life. Perhaps a
superficial take on what many would describe as equally superficial Californian trend to “do
something spiritual,” the above quote goes to show there’s something to American career frenzy
that remains unique to the United States. The opportunity cost for “dolce far niente” or “the joy
of doing nothing,” runs high.

Coming from Serbia, a country of six million in Eastern Europe that once belonged to a larger,
war-torn entity called socialist Yugoslavia, I was not fully aware of the notion of “career
anxiety” when I came to Washington DC for my MA degree. Until one evening, at the very onset
of the school year, a colleague of mine who was just turning twenty-seven raised his glass and
voiced his fear: “Twenty-seven: no serious job and no stable career track.” I was twenty- three at
the time and could not comprehend why anyone would be obliged to have a career track, let
alone a stable one, especially at (what I saw as) the tender age of twenty seven. In fact, I had
never entertained the concept the way my American friends were referring to it.

While many Americans move out of their homes when they’re 19 to hit college, East- European
model is quite different- countries are smaller and if there’s any migration- it is directed typically
towards the capital- so young people continue to live with their families through college.
Because of high unemployment rates and poor standard of living, they are not expected to
become financially independent- and many depend on their parents well into their late twenties
or even early thirties-without a sense of shame that such state of affairs entails in the US. These
factors reduce the relevance of what Americans often describe as “the treadmill feel”- an almost
compulsive desire for continuous promotions, financial gains, followed by a rise in social status,
and an increasing social anxiety.

In societies that are similar to mine, the American model is looked down upon as “harsh
capitalist” “individualistic” and above all “alienated-” as American parents are not perceived to
provide enough financial and emotional support for their children. In fact my family and friends
had observed that I shouldn’t have chosen America, since I would probably feel better in
Western Europe- where life is not as fast paced as in the US and capitalism still has a “human
face.”

Americans still work nine full weeks (350 hours) longer than West Europeans do and paid
vacation days across Western Europe are well above the US threshold. The French still have the
35 hour working week, while the hourly productivity is one of the highest in the world. On the
other hand, in the US, an increasing popularity of employment therapy suggests that a high-

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paying job still comes first, as job issues “have a huge mental health component,” and therapists
emphasize the importance of “toxic co-workers and the ramifications of massive layoffs.”

In Serbia even young and busy corporate-minded professionals do not have to mark their
calendars to meet with close friends- one can always find the time for a spontaneous chat over
coffee. Still, this laid back culture is now beginning to change with an increasing development of
free market capitalism.

I still remember how strange it felt when I first came to DC and had to schedule coffees and
lunches with people weeks or even months in advance. I found it odd that people rarely picked
up the cell phone (which, granted, could be merely my personal experience, although many
Americans confirmed it!) and would often leave the time and date of the call in their voicemails-
which implied the other person might not get back to them in a while. I also came to discover
that what Americans often referred to as “friends,” people from my region would prefer to call
“acquaintances.” The term “friend” cannot be reserved for someone you meet once in a couple of
months and do not know well enough to open up to.

Numerous famous authors have outlined the dangers of isolation and careerism in the American
society. In her famous work “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” Hannah Arendt equates careerism with
lack of thinking that led to Holocaust: “what for Eichmann was a job, with its daily routine, its ups
and downs, was for the Jews quite literally the end of the world. Genocide […] is work. If it is to be done,
people must be hired and paid; if it is to be done well, they must be supervised and promoted.”

Still, as I researched this topic, I ran into an interesting take on “Eat Pray Love” by a 23-year old
blogger: “We are not sympathetic to spiritual personal crises anymore. If you want to have an
emotional breakdown about something, you better have a logical, elaborate and secular reason;
otherwise you will be dismissed as whiny, annoying and laughable.” I wonder if her comment
has to do with the lack of experience or the possibility that the generation entering the work force
will not have an adequate justification for its desire to escape the treadmill feel- amidst all the
superficial takes on this complex topic.