The Quarter Life: Careers

It's the Quarter Life! My partner in crime Bryce has his post up, along with the links to the old posts. Check it out.

On with the show.

If you want to hear a twentysomething rant, ask them about their job. Seriously, try it. I know very, very few people who are my age(ish) and absolutely love what they do. They're out there, but they are certainly elusive.

Intuitively, this makes a lot of sense. Most of my friends are working jobs that a) pay them A LOT of money but demand an incredible amount of their time and energy, b) pay them almost no money AND demand an incredible amount of their time and energy, but offer them the opportunity to participate in some greater good, or c) don't pay very well, aren't all that interesting, and are really just helping to support grad school/bumming/getting on their feet. It's exceedingly rare to find someone in this age bracket who is getting paid pretty well to do something that they love to do but that doesn't consume their life.

I'm sure it's possible that someone has this job, I just don't know who it is.

Can I get a blogger comment amen?

Conventional wisdom holds that in your 20's you are building your life. You are putting in your time, working your way up the food chain, still in school, or figuring out what you are going to do. Whatever. The point is, at this age we're not supposed to have satisfying careers. We're supposed to have jobs.

And that's the catch. A career and a job really aren't the same thing. What I have right now is a job. It's a job that I really like (most of the time), but it's still a job.

A career, as a opposed to a job, should be a vocation. A career should be one of those things where you say, on a regular basis, "They pay me to do this?!" Don't get me wrong, a job can be like that as well (see: Me eating delicious burritos while talking about global economics). A career, at its best, should be deeply satisfying because it should combine your greatest personal gifts and your greatest personal longings.

And something else. It should fulfill a genuine need.

And that's where I get myself into trouble.

I'm a pharisee (little p, I'm not actually Jewish, or a scholar of the law, or...you get the point). Thg point is that I love the law. I want it to protect me. To make me righteous. To make me loved.

My legalism touches all things, and career is no exception. I believe that my thinking goes something like this: God says to love others -> The world has many people who need love -> I believe in God -> I should find people in the world to love -> Someone will pay me to love people -> I should do that even if it isn't what I want most in the world -> God will love me more if I choose this path.

That logical progression is, I'll be the first to admit, pretty sick. It's especially gross when you realize what a horrible perversion of love it really is.

The other day my girlfriend (Hi Deanna!) was asking me about my dream job. What would I do if I could do anything? "Something in music," I said. "A producer or manager, A&R for a label maybe. I don't know if I'd actually enjoy doing that, but it seems like I really would." So will I pursue that? I don't really know. I think the reality is that I don't actually know what it is that I like to do. I don't know what it is that I'm all that good at. At this point, I can't even guarantee that I'm doing something because I want to rather than because I think that I should.

I'm not sure, at this point in time, that I'm capable of doing any sort of work that doesn't serve, in some way, as an idol.

And so I find myself with nothing to say. I like my job. I have no idea what my career might look like. For the first time in my life, that feels really nice.

The Quarter Life: Romantic Relationships Rd. 2

My great friend Mike wrote a really amazing piece for the last Quarter Life. Check it out here.

After writing my last installment of The Quarter Life I got a comment from my friend Lexie asking me to answer some questions she had about that post. Here are a few of my thoughts. Anything for a friend, Lex.

Very conservative philosophy Aaron!! This reminds me of a guy i dated in high school who broke up with me by saying "I can live without you." it made me so mad. Anyhoo, what do you think of dating just to learn more about yourself/others? Like the Townsend/McCloud philosophy? Or the idea of focusing on dating itself/trying to date a lot as a particular season, much like seasons of intentionally not dating?

I think that experience, the experience of ourselves in a relationship, and the experience of an intimate encounter with another person, is probably the strongest argument out there for why dating is a fantastic idea. I have learned a great deal about myself from dating. I have also learned a tremendous amount about women/men/God/life/love/etc. from dating, much more than I could ever possibly relate to you here. And learning for learning's sake, as any liberal arts grad will tell you, is a very good thing. Unfortunately, most of what I learned from some of those relationships was learned the hard way. And just because I learned something does not mean that those relationships were a good idea to begin with, or functional by any stretch of the imagination. Calling some of them relationships, in all honesty, might be too kind. Was some of that hardship and hurt necessary? Possibly. Immaturity, "life issues," ideas about what dating should be, etc., all played their part in making some of my past relationships memorable for all the wrong reasons. But poor choices about when and who I should date did not make things any better.

So "learning about yourself" is great, but it can be a messy and dangerous affair. Even more so if that is your primary, or only purpose, in dating that specific person. Going into a relationship (or even a date) thinking "I like them-ish," while not a sure recipe for disaster, does raise some ethical questions. Starting to date someone without a clear sense of why you are doing it or what you want out of it opens yourself up to a host of complications, but it also leaves you very much in danger of hurting the other person. Do they share your vision of dating? If not, your "learning about yourself" could be their "getting rejected by someone I really, really liked." Like I said in my last post, I don't believe that we date because we desire it, but because we must. Ideally the two coincide.

Dating in the right context is clearly very good. To put this in a somewhat (ok, very) crude manner, marriage is not a product that we should buy without shopping around a little bit first. So in that sense, I'm all for dating. I'm just not all for dating every person (or even most people) that come your way. In high school there were a few girls that I should have asked out on a date but didn't because I was afraid of rejection. Clearly that was not a healthy way to date (or, more specifically, not to date). I also dated a girl in high school that I barely knew because she came on to me very strongly (i.e. I knew that rejection wasn't likely) and that turned out, not surprisingly, very poorly. In the first example I needed more initiative, in the second, more wisdom and self-control.

I personally don't believe that a "season of dating" is a very good idea for many reasons, but for a few especially compelling ones in particular. Relationships, ideally, are special. We value our family (in many cases) more highly than our friends, and our friends more highly than our acquaintances. This formula (there's that word again) becomes more complicated when we insert Christ into our lives, but I won't go into that here. The point is that most people feel that different types of relationships are, well, different, and that some of them are more special than others. Dating should be a special act reserved for people we really care about.

The most serious problem with a season of dating, in my opinion, is the potential for that season to turn into a long-term (or even lifetime) commitment. How many people do you know who started seeing someone casually ("just to see"/hooking up at parties/season of dating/we're just friends) and just never stopped? This scenario doesn't always end badly, I can think of many happy couples who started off this way. But is it something to which we should aspire? What other major life choices do we take "just try it out" or "we'll see what happens" attitudes with? Is that how you chose a college? Plan to buy a house? This might make me conservative, but I think that dating is something to be respected and, in some sense, feared. In my experience it is much easier to never date someone at all than to stop dating them once the process has been started. And once you start dating, going back to being friends is always a difficult process. In many cases it simply doesn't work. Since most people that you will ever meet are going to be friends instead of dates, why not preserve those friendships rather than explore dating just because it's fun?

I also think that a "season of dating" sort of misses the point of a "season of not dating." At various times I have resisted the urge to enter into potentially great dating situations because of time constraints/outside pressures/personal issues/need to grow with God/whatever. But that should be the exception, not the rule. The default for any single Christian should be "available for dating," unless there is other work in your life that needs to be done. For many of us, there is. So a season of not dating is a way to recognize a unique situation and make an intentional choice about it. A season of dating, to me, seems like a license to do things that you wouldn't do otherwise. "I don't really like him that much, but I'm trying to date a lot right now." See my point? What prompts a season of dating? Why doesn't that prompt being open to dating in general, as long as the person is right?

When I think back on just my time here in Agua Prieta, let alone college, there are a number of women that I probably could have started dating at one time or another. I do not believe that any of those relationships would have been a very good choice. So my dating here has been more than conservative, it has been non-existent. But I believe it has also been the most healthy and faithful choice that I could have made. I haven't done it perfectly, but it could have been a lot worse.

I have some more thoughts that I could but I think I'll leave it at that. I'd love to hear what you (or any of you) have to say about this.

The Quarter Life: Romantic Relationships

It's the moment that you've all been waiting for, round two of The Quarter Life. My first Quarter Life, a post on friendship and community, can be found right here. Bryce's first Quarter Life post can be found here, and his new post, like all of his other fine writing, can be found over at Six Hours On Sunday.

If you're new to this blog since we started The Quarter Life I suggest checking out the old posts first to see what it is that we're doing up in here. I'm also well aware that some other folks are probably going to be jumping in on this, so if you are over the age of twenty (and under the age of thirty), and feel like writing a post for this, let me know and I will link it up here.

One final note. I have written this post from my own perspective, i.e., the perspective of a man who engages in romantic relationships exclusively with women. This is not to exclude other types of relationships, but rather to avoid speaking about things which I have not experienced for myself. Just so you know.



When I think about "romantic" relationships and the period of life that I am in right now, my thoughts immediately separate into two distinct categories. In the first category are memories of past relationships, my current thoughts about women, love, and associated nonsense, and finally, my desires and prayers for my relationships in the future.

The second category, which I must confess is substantially more active than the first at this present moment, is filled with my thoughts about, memories of, and great hopes for my friends' relationships, their better halves, and in some cases, their future spouses.

As I am prone to do, I find that I have processed the entirety of romantic love down into two neat packages: my own, and everybody else's.

I could write a monster of a blog post if I chose to talk about both of these things, so instead I think I'll just stick with myself. It's not that I don't love my friends, it's just that I'm such a great topic choice. I jest. I'm also not going to say very much about God in this post as it would stretch an already long post to the point of breaking. Instead I will say that my thoughts here are informed so deeply by my faith that to dwell on them would be like pointing out the sun when looking at the sky. And I'll leave it at that.

Ok, it's confession time. If I'm going to talk about relationships, I have to get this one out of the way: I used to have this sort of formula thing for dating. That sounds pretty sick, I know. I used it in order to figure out who I should date, and when I should date them. It's an odd thing to have to admit to. To be honest, if someone were trying to get me interested in dating their friend, finding out that said friend had a "dating formula" would just about guarantee that the two of us would never see the inside of a movie theater alone. Ah hypocrisy.

But I basically used that formula to guide my romantic life for years, and to some extent I still do. I have acquired the good sense to stop thinking about it as a formula, but much of the philosophy from those days does in fact remain. In my defense, I will say that both the formula and the philosophy were either stolen directly from my sister, or developed in the context of her own reflections about her dating experiences. And now she's happily married with a really cool dog, so it can't be all bad, right?

So what was the formula? Well before I get into that let me talk a little bit about the philosophy behind the formula. My general sense when I first started using the formula was that dating, as most of us practiced it, was a bad thing. Bad in the sense that that most of my friends and I just sort of stumbled into dating with the vague notion that it felt good and everyone else was doing it.

I did have the good sense, even at that tender age, to realize that not dating was sort of a bad idea as well. Josh Harris never convinced me that "kissing dating goodbye" was something to which I should aspire. The transition from being single to a lifetime of marriage, no matter how much some Christians (*cough Boundless webzine cough*) like to talk about "courtship," seems like it should have at least a few intermediary steps. And some of those steps should include dinner and a movie with someone you aren't committed to sharing a bed with for the rest of your earthly days.

So my formula for dating was born from a sense that dating is a great thing when practiced with extreme restraint. And the formula helped me to figure out when I should enter into the wonderful mystery that is a relationship, and when it'd be best if I just stayed clear of it and, sigh, her, altogether.

Here's the formula: If I began to like a woman, that is to say, favored her above any of the other women in my acquaintance, the first step I would take was to hurry up and wait. Doing nothing was a key strategy in my dating formula. Why nothing? Well, nothing gives you a lot of time for the deer-in-the-headlights attraction to go away and a little bit of clear thinking to return to the situation. That incredibly smart/attractive/fun girl in my Women's Studies class? Also a devout atheist. Hmmm, guess it's a good thing I didn't ask her to dinner. To be quite honest, doing nothing is what I have done for most of my life. I have spent years doing nothing with one girl or another. I'm great at doing nothing.

And that's basically the way that the formula works. It's nothing if not simple. If you notice yourself liking a girl, the most important thing that you can possibly do is to say nothing to her and never do anything about it. Nothing is the backbone of the whole system.

Ok, you got me. The one problem with my formula is that if you always do nothing then there's a pretty good chance that you will never date anyone. Ever. That's not a formula, that's a religious order. It's a fair criticism. This is where the exception clause comes in. You always do nothing until someone comes along who is so compelling that you absolutely must must make an exception for them. So you break the cardinal commandment of doing nothing and you actually say something to her. You might even ask her name. Kidding.

At this stage in life there are always good reasons why, at any given time, I probably shouldn't be dating. And there are always pretty compelling reasons why I shouldn't be dating most of the women that I might be interested in. But sometimes you meet someone so great that none of that matters. So dating, in my opinion, should be reserved for the times when that woman is so incredible that not getting into a relationship with her would be a folly of the highest order.

And this is where I can start to get myself into trouble. The thing is, I know A LOT of incredible women. A multitude. A plethora. A surplus even. I know more awesome women than I can be friends with, let alone date. But clearly I am not trying very hard given that I am currently seeing none of them. Which is an observation that actually takes us into a different philosophy I have on relationships. The "table" philosophy, as I like to call it.

The four legs of any successful relationship (hence the table) are spiritual, intellectual, relational, and physical. I think that's pretty self-explanatory. For a relationship to work, two people need to be compatible in those four ways. And as most of us know, that isn't exactly easy to achieve. So the question is not "Is this girl amazing?" but rather "Is this girl amazing for me?" Because of this the question "Are you dating anyone right now?" always struck me as mostly harmless, but the ensuing "Would you like to be?" always rubbed me the wrong way. Dating, I have always believed, is something that you embark upon not because you would like to at any given time, but because you encounter someone so incredible that you have no other choice but to share at least some part of your life with them.

And so that's where I'm at. I've stopped using the formula, but I'm still using the philosophy. I still look at dating with quite a bit of hesitancy, and at marriage with a sense that "I really want this- at some point in the future." And I still weigh my interest in women (one woman at a time, naturally) against whether or not dating one of them is the only sensible thing I could possibly do. Not very romantic, I know. But I hope that it's fair to me and fair to potential partners, and I pray that it's faithful. And one day in the future I believe that it will lead me to someone to hike with, watch BOTH versions of "Pride and Prejudice" with, to argue with, and to play with. Most importantly, I pray that it will bring me into the steady presence of someone who will travel with me on a path that will bring both of us closer to the people that God would have us be.

That is just about as close to living happily ever after as I would care to have it.

The Quarter Life: Friends and Community

My good friend Bryce Perica and I are starting up a project that we are calling "The Quarter life." The Quarter Life is a new series about, well...life, I guess. More specifically, it's about the experience of life that we have had in our 20's. Bryce and I chose some topics that we both wanted to cover, and over the next few months we are going to be posting pieces on things like family, work, finances, etc. The first installment of The Quarter Life begins today with a post on friendship and community. As always, Bryce's stuff is up at http://sixhoursonsunday.blogspot.com.


In Mexico it's not uncommon for children to never leave home. The first time that someone told me this I couldn't believe it. "Never!?," I thought to myself. But it turns out that, by and large, it is true. The ideal family situation in Mexico is one where the children grow up, go to college, come back home, get a job, get married, and finally move out of their parents house. And by move out, I mean move into the house that they built across the street from their parents.

This contrasts sharply with the way that I was brought up to think about my own family, and especially how I was raised think about friends and community. As a (white) American I have always had this sense that, while being really important, friends, and even sometimes family, were not necessarily permanent fixtures in life. I don't think this played out any more clearly than in my decision to head off to Pomona College in sunny Los Angeles, CA. For a starters, I didn't know anyone at Pomona College. No professors, no students, no staff. It never occurred to me that it was strange to leave all of my family and friends behind and set off for a place full of people that I had never met.

Of course I now have plenty of friends from my Pomona days, and another big group from an assortment of related adventures, but I have yet to regain the community that I had back in Longmont growing up. Intuitively, that makes a lot of sense. I have spent the last five years moving around from place to place, never spending more than several months investing in any one thing, or one cohesive group of people. Not surprisingly, I have missed the community that I used to have, and for all sorts of reasons. In many ways I think that my life has been less fun and more difficult because so many of those people were not around.

And I think that this is pretty common. My sense is that twentysomethings experience a great deal of loneliness and isolation as they strive to form new communities and friendship groups. I have talked to countless recent graduates, and even friends who graduated years ago, about how much more difficult it has been to form friendships and community in the "working world" than it was back in college. So many of us, myself included, spend the majority of our time in strange new places working demanding jobs or trying to secure another degree (that will hopefully land us more demanding jobs). All this while trying keep up with the friends and communities that we left behind.

The issue of keeping up with friends from high school and college is so challenging that many people (myself included) begin to intentionally prioritize these friendships. I prioritize my friendships using the context of weddings. Why weddings? Well, for starters, weddings are expensive. I'm not even talking about having a wedding, I'm talking about going to weddings. Flights. Food. Gifts. Clothing. It all adds up. It's even more expensive if you are fortunate enough (no sarcasm) to be included in the wedding party. It is simply impossible for any twentysomething without a trust fund to attend all of the weddings to which they are invited. As a result, my friendships have become classified by the existence of theoretical weddings, theirs or mine. Here's my hierarchy of friendships as evaluated through weddings:

1. Friends who will be in my wedding
2. Friends whose wedding I will be in
3. Friends whose wedding I will attend
4. Friends who will attend my wedding
5. Friends who will not attend my wedding
6. Friends whose wedding I will not attend.

I'm not a big fan of using formulas or rankings on people, but that's a little disingenuous to say right now since I do use them in this context. Things like visits, gifts, e-mails, phone calls, and a whole other set of "friendly" gestures are doled out based on where people fall on the wedding scale. It's not meant to be mean spirited, just to make sure that the people who are most important in my life both feel and stay just that, important. It's also far from perfect. The truth is that I tend to neglect important people no matter what (currently I am badly neglecting many dear friends who still go to Pomona), but it's a way to be more accountable. It's also been a helpful way for me to realize when new friends become really important to me. If I try to think about my wedding without them and I just can't see it, that's probably a good sign that I should work extra hard to stay in touch.

All of these thoughts, beliefs, and assorted musings leaves me feeling convicted about two things. The first is that I simply don't value my friends enough. I think this is most evident in the ways that I make decisions about my life. In college, what I did over summer vacation or any other break was much more influenced by what seemed inexpensive or fun than by its particular proximity to my friends. That wasn't always the case, but it was a lot. More important, however, is that I have yet to make a serious sacrifice in order to be closer to my friends. That is to say, I have yet to give up a good job, or something I hold to be of similar value, to seek a deeper and more meaningful relationship with my friends. If I am serious about becoming a more faithful, more compassionate, and more balanced person, I should be more serious about spending a lot of time with my friends. Friends, at their best, are the catalyst for change and growth in your life. Obviously they should be fun to be around, interesting to talk to, etc., but mostly they should be someone who can hold you accountable, and who will let you do the same for them. Without that I just don't think it's friendship.

Community, especially Christian community, is a whole 'nother animal. It is, as we see it best modeled in Acts, a physical manifestation of the Kingdom of God. Unlike friends, who we have some say in, community, no matter where we are, is given to us without the choice to opt out. Community, even more than friends, pushes us outside of our comfort zones and into a place where we might be required to confront Jesus. It is often the people we don't like, and especially don't like to love, the people who make us uncomfortable, the people who make us feel awkward, and even the people who make us feel awful. That's community. And community, as far as I am concerned, is best faced in the company of friends. And this is where I feel convicted once again. As much as I have tried to contribute to a number of different communities- Pomona, urban Los Angeles, Uganda, Douglas/Agua Prieta, etc., I have never been able to contribute as fully as I would like to. This is, I think, partially a function of the relatively short amount of time that I have committed to the people in those places, but is also due largely to the fact that I experienced most of those places, and the people in them experienced me, almost totally in the absence of my closest friends.

So, like many twentysomethings, I face the decision of accepting my relationships with my friends and my community as they have always been, or of being proactive in imagining how I want them to be in the future. I am trying to take strides to choose the latter. For example, I recently made a commitment to a friend to live with him after I leave Agua Prieta. I don't know if this will be immediately after, as there are considerations with my family as well, but it is a commitment I intend to keep regardless of what other opportunities come up. I wish the details were more specific, but it's a start. In addition to the benefit I will receive by enjoying his company, decisions like this, I believe, will allow me to be a more meaningful participant in new communities in the future. In the presence of my closest friends I will be able to love and serve in a greater capacity than I am currently able to. That, I think, is a major lesson of Jesus and his disciples. And for me, the prospect of loving more and serving more is a terribly exciting thing.

Note: Special thanks to Maite, Lexie, Chris, Mike, Laura, Grace, Thandiwe, Brian, Bryce, Erik, Chris, Wes, Kyle, Collin, Brianne, Travis, Ben, and Maile for having a profound impact on my thoughts about friendship and community. I'm sure that I'm leaving out many others. Sorry 'bout that.