In my English courses with Japanese students we discuss a variety of topics. A few weeks ago I posed them a question I was genuinely curious about: What is your Dream Job?
Part of why I like teaching abroad is that it gives me an insight into another culture and how Japanese people think, which in turn helps me understand my own culture. I had no idea what kind of dream job a bunch of twenty-year-old Japanese English majors might have. Teacher? Hotel clerk? Translator? Lawyer? Generic office worker with an important-sounding job title?
The notion of knowing your dream job is interesting to me because it implies that you have some passion for something you really want to do. My dream job, of course, is being a full-time novelist, though when I was twenty I don’t think I really understood that yet. Maybe when you were twenty years old you had a job you wanted to do more than any other, or maybe now you still have a job you’re aspiring to—don’t give up yet!
Anyway, I posed the dream job question several times to several groups of students, once as part of a warm-up activity, and two more times when it came up in textbook lessons. And here’s what happened each time:
The vast majority of students didn’t have a dream job.
In fact, most of them were confused by the question or seemed unsure of what to say. They didn’t feel pressured into saying a dream job just to give an answer—instead, they just kind of meandered around the question by saying that they didn’t have one, then talking about other things they wanted to do instead.
One subject, though, came up a LOT in these discussions. And that was stability.
Stability is a HUGE Driving Force in People’s Life Decisions
During our classroom dream job discussions, several students pulled out their dictionaries to look up the Japanese word antei (安定). The an (安) is the same character you’ll find in words like anzen (safe, 安全) and anshin (relief, 安心) and implies a kind of tranquil feeling. The tei (定), meanwhile, is the same character you’ll find in words like yotei (set plans, 予定) and shitei (reserved, 指定).
Together the characters roughly equate to set tranquility: or in English, stability.
Breaking down the word stability made its connotations far more vivid. I’ve written about stability on this blog before, but seeing it in this new way made me understand the allure it has for people, that kind of consistent, steady awareness that things are going to be financially OK, both now and in the future, and how reassuring this can be for people.
In short, stability makes people feel safe, and they know that this safety is going to last for a long time.
Many jobs offer this kind of safety in a neat, prepackaged form: things like regular paychecks that never go down so we can plan for set expenses, health insurance so we can go to the doctor if we get sick, retirement packages so we can retire when we get too old to work. It’s like the company’s way of saying, If you come work for us as a loyal employee, we’ll take care of you and make sure you never have any financial problems ever again. We’ll give you the stability we need to keep you safe.
Now, I’ll pause for a moment to say that in recent decades wages for most workers have remained stagnant and that not all all companies offer benefits like paid leave. The actual benefits of job stability aren’t quite what they were sixty years ago, but that hasn’t eliminated the fantasy that salaried jobs will bring them the stability they crave.
People want this stability—like, a lot. My Japanese students wanted it, and I sense a similar draw in Americans I know. Older people are constantly asking younger people What are you going to do for a job? as they project their worries about the younger person’s future, and I know dozens of workers who suffer through less than ideal conditions because they’re worried about losing what limited stability they have if they were to quit.
And a lot of people, like my Japanese students, value that stability more than their actual jobs.
Creative Jobs Often Exist Outside the Realm of Stability
Most creative jobs don’t come with retirement packages and health insurance—at least not to start. They also aren’t easy to get, might come with low pay, and are dependent on how successful your work is in an ever-changing world.
In short, they come with risk.
A person who was primarily interested in having a stable life wouldn’t necessarily be drawn to a creative job because these jobs don’t include that stability. Instead, a person who was primarily interested in a stable job would place any creative ambitions they had as secondary, and would prioritize a career that offered that stability over a career that seemed more interesting but didn’t offer the same stability.
That’s assuming, though, that the person has any ambitions for a dream job all—even one outside a creative field.
If you don’t have a real dream job but you do value stability, OF COURSE it makes sense that you’d place stability as your top priority, because the lure of not having to worry is strong, and nothing else is taking priority.
Many creative people, though, are constantly fighting that battle of whether to pursue their dreams or choose an easier life where they won’t have to worry. For them, this battle can be fierce. It can force you to go against what your family, society, and the people around you all think is best for you—not to mention fighting your own better judgement.
Pursuing a creative career that isn’t stable involves making bold decisions, standing up for what you believe in, and taking considerable risks.
This battle isn’t an easy one. Nor is it for everyone. But for some people, choosing between the stable life and the creative life can be very, very real.
Final Thoughts
I will say that having various safety nets can make pursuing a non-stable creative life that much easier. Getting out of debt and saving a large amount of money has made that battle easier for me personally, and I know a lot of people who started off in stronger financial positions feel this battle less strongly than others.
On my end, I also realized while spending three years at a very stable Day Job that even though stability made my life WAY easier, a creative career was what I really wanted.
These decisions can be very difficult to make, and can often involve a lot of trial and error. Wherever you are in your own creative journey, I hope you’re able to stand back, look at what’s really important, and plan your life accordingly—even if it involves making a change.
Cover photo used under Creative Commons 2.0 license. The original is available here.
All so true! I think part of this is also the reason you see so many people turning to creative endeavors after they’ve had the day job stability.
That’s a really good point! I think the fear of not having a stable life can be really strong when we’re younger, but then when we get older we can move past it and take more risks. I’m wondering now if my students responses would have been different if they’d been older…