by Rev. Dick Weaver
My wife, Cathy Barker, is “eruditer” than I am, and has an online subscription to the New York Times. She shared with me an article by Kevin Roose dated April 21, titled, “Welcome to the YOLO Economy.”
It’s an article about how some younger working people, who for one reason or another have some investment income or money in the bank, are either leaving what have become stultifying jobs or are contemplating doing so. The reason is “YOLO.” You Only Live Once. The writer cites a recent Microsoft survey that says more than 40% of workers, globally, were considering leaving their jobs this year. Another social network found that 49% of its users actually planned to get a new job this year.
Now, I don’t actually know how different those statistics are from any normal year’s data. But the article talks about how the pandemic has affected younger workers. Many, of course, have lost their jobs. But others have found that they like working from home and don’t want to go back to the office. Others are feeling the need to simply give up the “just a job” kind of work to explore things more in line with their passions. YOLO. “We’ve all had a year to evaluate if the life we’re living is the one we want to be living,” said Christian Wallace, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, who was quoted in the article. Languishing at home, even while still “at work,” has given people the opportunity and the encouragement to do some soul-searching. And they’re contemplating or actually putting into action such things as moving to the Caribbean to start a tourism company, or giving up a big salary accompanied by big pressure and small job-satisfaction in order to do something similar but in a smaller firm or by working for themselves. Or moving to Montana!
I was a child in the ‘50s, so I may have no clue what was really going on, but things seemed fairly stable then. You finished school or got out of the military, then you got a stable job and bought a small house, and life went on. Were people happy and fulfilled in their work? I doubt it. But the desire to fit in, settle down, and find job security actually did bring some satisfaction with it. Now? I don’t know.
People move to Montana partly to get away from lackluster careers, locations, or visions for the future. We’ve certainly found out during this pandemic year that people with a good deal of money are moving to Montana! I can’t blame them. Are they finding what they want here, where you don’t have to drive very far to get to the nearest trout stream or trailhead? I hope they are.
I’m wondering what personal faith has to do with this YOLO phenomenon. Back in the good-old-days, people at least claimed, for example, to belong to religious or faith organizations. Today, there are many people in their 50s and younger who have maybe never set foot inside a church, synagogue, or mosque. Not that church membership really means that I’ve actually got a spiritual life. But it’s a start. I think that people have realized, though, that personal satisfaction doesn’t come from a fat paycheck in a dead-end job. Riding on a commuter train an hour-and-a-half each way to squeeze into that same job certainly doesn’t work for people in the same way it used to work. If being part of a faith community isn’t part of the equation, I hope the trout stream is. In any case, I think a sense of lack or inadequacy in one’s personal spirituality is part of the equation, even if individual seekers don’t know it. Are these folks exploring that, or just quitting their old jobs in some undefinable quest for nirvana?
Is this YOLO-driven trend of dissatisfied time-clock-punchers really going to reshape not just how America works but how we actually live? Is there a place in this incipient new world for people of faith and for our faith communities? How can we, who are maybe already “livin’ the dream” here in Montana, have an impact in whatever new economy is taking shape? (I’m defining “economy” here to mean something like the management of a system, or the entire management of a household or state: “oikonomia.” Note that the word “ecology” has to do with the relationship between organisms and their environment—not wildly different than the broader understanding of “economy.”)
I hope we are indeed seeing the reshaping of our economy into something that’s more life-giving. Maybe faith communities such as Pilgrim have a place in the new world that is forming around us. Shall we find out?
— Rev. Dick Weaver currently serves as Supply Pastor for Pilgrim Church