The Successful Slave

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,’ says the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.’” (Isaiah 55:8 and 9 NKJV)

“Hey Ethan, you should sign up with LinkedIn, you know,” Gabriel encouraged me. “Everyone has an account with them. You can potentially attract headhunters or employers who might consider hiring you.” He paused and took a sip of his drink. “It’s like free advertisement for you!”

I was having a casual lunch with an ex-colleague of mine and we were chatting about seeking new job opportunities. Gabriel turned out to be another advocate of one of the largest business-oriented social networking services for working professionals. It was not the first time a well-meaning friend or colleague had cajoled me into checking out LinkedIn. Thus far, I had been pretty apprehensive about signing up despite my intention of finding a new job. The truth was that I was not desperate enough. I was lazy and I thought God could supernaturally orchestrate a new job for me, just like He did previously for me. Yet I also recognized the need to keep current and do the due diligence to get what I really wanted.

A few days later, I relented and I found out what the buzz was all about with LinkedIn.

It was impressive. The platform was like a massive confluence of individual billboards screaming, “Hire me!” This social network not only proactively suggests new job openings with the best fit on a regular basis, it also automatically connects you to everyone who has an email address on your email contact list. LinkedIn revived my memories of people whom I had long forgotten until I saw their names and faces again. It was fun and it was powerful!

To some extent, LinkedIn is like Facebook, but it is more than that. One stark difference is this: most people generally set privacy conditions on Facebook to keep people from knowing everything about them. The opposite applies to LinkedIn. It is free for all to see, and people want you to notice them. All the members on LinkedIn want you to see their accomplishments, the awards they have won, how far they have progressed in their careers, their aspirations for their next career move, the highest education they have received, their thoughts in their specific area of expertise, and so on and so forth. The list is not exhaustive. Everyone is positioning himself or herself as the most valuable player in his or her field of expertise. Everyone seems so successful.

But after a while, the thrill of preparing my own personal marketing content and satisfying my curiosity about how my friends, schoolmates and colleagues had progressed in their career started to turn somewhat depressing.

Perhaps it was because I was looking for new job opportunities. It would be fair to say that most people harbor the intention of leaving their current position due to some degree of dissatisfaction. They want a job with a higher salary, a better boss, a better working environment, more opportunities for career progression, and more exposure – just to name a few legitimate reasons. The end in mind: to be more successful. So when I started to see my peers gaining ground in their respective professional fields, and having acquired trophies of higher education accreditation, I was immensely impressed. Wow! Things were certainly working out well for them. One of my ex-colleagues who started out in the same mid-level managerial position as me, rose to become the sales director of a multinational company in one of the largest countries in the world – all within the span of four years after I left the company. To top it off, he managed to turn the business around by generating twenty million dollars in less than two years. This was a great accomplishment, as I am acutely aware of the kind of corporate environment he operated in. Consequently, he received the most prestigious award that the CEO confers each year and naturally, it became a noteworthy trophy on his LinkedIn account. Respect and awe were what I had for him, and this was even more so because he was several years younger than me and it was a rare achievement for his age.

So when I started looking at my current state, I began to feel small. They looked so successful; I looked mediocre. They progressed so much; I appeared to stay stagnant. They led huge teams; I remained a sole contributor with minimal direct reports. Somehow, it became more depressing when I recalled how I used to lead my classes in academic studies and accomplished results that parents would be very proud of.

Have you felt the same way? Perhaps you might have held a high position in a company but were asked to leave during a recent restructuring exercise. “Why me?” you asked yourself. “Am I not worth it?” Perhaps you recently caught up with your ex-classmates and, they told you with great passion and enthusiasm about their overseas experiences, the places they went to and the Michelin star restaurants they patronized, but you were not able to relate to their conversation because you did not have the financial resources to afford these experiences. Perhaps you realized that almost all of your peers were living in private apartments, some owning more than one property, but you were still living in public housing. Perhaps after a great annual night out with your peers, you bade farewell and all of you went to pick up your cars in the common carpark – but when your friends unlocked their cars, all the cars that beeped around yours were bigger or sexier or more luxurious. The situation can be rather embarrassing. All of you started out on equal footing upon graduation many years back. But look how much they have prospered! You might begin to ask yourself, “What have I been doing all this time?”