Spare a thought for those who haven’t been elected president. I refer not just to Heather Humphreys or Jim Gavin, nor merely to the various public figures who tried in vain to get on the ballot.
Sympathy must also be extended to a wider group: to all those people who once said “I want to president when I grow up”, or who otherwise harboured secret dreams of rising to the State’s highest office. That opportunity is now shut off for another seven years.
Many of us carry through life a firm belief that we are destined for pre-eminence and public acclaim. Parker J Palmer, an American author, educator, activist and practising Quaker, is one of them. Or he was one of them – until he got the notion out of his system.
“From high school on, I had been surrounded by expectations that I would ascend to some sort of major leadership,” he wrote in his book Let Your Life Speak, first published in 2000.
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These expectations drove him into prestigious roles in academia. But, as he climbed higher professionally, the belief that he was destined to be superior to others became more of a burden. The anxiety grew and ultimately he collapsed into clinical depression.
I came across Palmer’s book through a recommendation by the Nigerian-American author Enuma Okoro, who writes a regular column on arts and culture for the Financial Times. Recalling how she read Let Your Life Speak in her late 20s, she said “it transformed the way I thought about my own life and what it means to try to live with some sense of purpose and authenticity”.
There is a quote by Palmer that Okoro said she had “come to cherish over the years”: “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you.” Palmer uses the example of the presidency to illustrate his point.
“Despite the American myth, I cannot be or do whatever I desire – a truism, to be sure, but a truism we often defy,” he writes. “It is clear ... that I cannot and will not be president of the United States, even though I grew up surrounded by a rhetoric that said anyone (read ‘any white male’) could rise to that lofty role. I no longer grieve for this particular limitation, for I cannot imagine a crueler fate for someone with my nature than to be president of anything, let alone a nation-state.”
It took Palmer some time to reach this conclusion as for many years he was the sort of person who chased titles to add to his CV. A turning point came when he went for a job as president of an educational institution – and found himself stumped at interview stage over why he wanted the job.
In theory, he was the most qualified candidate for the role but, still, he could not come up with an answer. Finally, he spoke: “Well ... I guess what I’d like most is getting my picture in the paper with the word ‘president’ under it.”
It was a laughable explanation, but he realised he was speaking the truth. Many of us chase goals in life for reasons that are ultimately stupid. We chase wealth and status – titles such as “president” – but who are we trying to impress?
Palmer traces his own decline into depression to the burden of trying to meet societal and parental expectations of success. And he traces his recovery – or what he calls his “vocational journey” – to being honest with himself. “The deepest vocational question is not ‘what ought I to do with my life?’ It is the more elemental and demanding ‘What am I? What is my nature?’”
Choosing your nature over your notions does not amount to a lack of ambition. On the contrary, it means having the courage to live in harmony with your core values while keeping both your abilities and your limitations in clear sight. It’s not about staying in your comfort zone. Rather it’s about making sure you’re pursuing goals for the right reasons.
One reason Palmer was glad he never became a college president is because he realised his vocation was to be a teacher, not an administrator nor the leader of an institution. He would have hated giving up the precious interactions he had with students.
Not to be too presumptuous but it never seemed like Gavin’s vocation was to hold an office such as president of Ireland. So he dodged a bullet by the way the campaign went. Running football drills in Parnell Park seems much more in his nature than hosting garden parties in Phoenix Park.
Palmer doesn’t presume there are universal lessons from his story. But his “journey out of darkness ... is simply the best source of data I have on a subject where generalisations often fail but truth may be found in the details”.
One of the details that resonated with me from Palmer’s journey was the way he would “waste energy on anger” whenever his plans were frustrated. He writes: “Here, I think, is another clue to finding true self and vocation: we must withdraw the negative projections we make on people and situations – projections that serve mainly to mask our fears about ourselves – and acknowledge and embrace our own liabilities and limits.”
