A Language Older Than Words - Derrick Jensen [55]
Somewhere along the line, my schooling fell short. Not only did it fail to permanently eradicate my perception of an animate world, it also left me ill-prepared for a life of gainful employment.
Through college I worked as a physics assistant for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). I learned how to program computers, assist in experiments, and align lasers. I also learned that if you pour liquid nitrogen out of a thermos on a hot July afternoon, it evaporates before it hits your bare feet yet still feels deliciously cool. Most important, I learned that I would never again sell my time.
I've never understood the stereotype of inefficient or lazy federal workers. The scientists with whom I worked were smart, resourceful, and dedicated. If one of my supervisors called in sick, I could usually count on him showing up later, unwilling to miss the day's experiment.
Their love for their work struck me, because I sometimes called in sick when it was a nice day, rationalizing the lie by telling myself I was sick of work, which was true enough.
For nearly as long as I can remember, I've had the habit of asking people if they like their jobs. Over the years, about 90 percent—with the exception of my bosses at NOAA—have said no. As I sat bored those days at my computer, I began to wonder what that percentage means, both socially and personally. I wondered what it does to each of us to spend the majority of our waking hours doing things we'd rather not do, wishing we were outside or simply elsewhere, wishing we were reading, thinking, making love, fishing, sleeping, or simply having time to figure out who the hell we are and what the hell we're doing. We never have enough time to catch up—I never knew what that meant, but it always felt as though I were running downhill, my body falling faster than my legs could carry me—enough time to try to understand what we want to do with the so very few hours each of us are given.
Two incidents stand out in my transition from lackadaisical employee to not being an employee at all. The first took place during my junior year in college. One of my classes took a field trip to a Hewlett-Packard plant, where hundreds of employees designed and assembled calculators and computers. The factory was a vision of hell—a clean, well-lit, unionized, well-paying, reasonably quiet, yet horribly repetitive hell—as people, mainly women of color, soldered circuits on boards, or used huge magnifiers to inspect the work of others. I couldn't imagine anyone choosing to spend a life this way, and wondered what they ignored in order to maintain composure and even sanity amid the boredom. I assumed that a purpose of the trip was to convince us to finish our degrees, thus guaranteeing we would never enter this circle of hell except as overseers. For me it didn't quite work that way, because the alternative seemed little better. Our guide was an engineer who didn't assemble but designed circuit boards, and I will never forget the pride with which he showed us his cubicle—perhaps eight feet by ten—and said, "After three years I've been given a window." The window was tall and narrow, and didn't open. The grass was green, the sky pale blue, the clouds white, the day warm.
The next morning, class began at eight. The instructor was an ancient, foul-tempered moose of a man who made it his practice to ask questions seemingly out of the air, and then whirl to demand an answer from a student caught unawares. That morning I was his victim. He said, "So," followed by a long pause as he paced the front of the classroom, "what did you learn yesterday?" He trailed off, then twisted impossibly quickly for a man his size, age, and health. He pointed and called my name.
Because this was a required class, and because my grades weren't high