The Holding Pen of Life
In a recent British movie I watched, the narrator sets up the plot about a man in later life (Jim Broadbent…Bridget Jone’s dear old dad) who will be facing a crisis of his legacy. The comment is a made about the man when he was young and in school that he and his fellows felt as though they were in a holding pen. He goes on by saying that he came to realize in college that he was simply in another holding pen and that he has determined that life is no more than one holding pen after another. This is an interesting thought or perhaps and interesting perspective would be more accurate. Do we all spend our lives waiting to get on to whatever is next?
I know that when I was in high school in Rome, I certainly felt like I was in a holding pen of sorts, waiting to get on to college and back to the United States. It’s not as though I had a burdensome upbringing. Quite the opposite. My mother made a point of letting me pursue my interests more or less no matter what they were. I really had very few constraints on me. If I wanted to do something, I did it. She never told me what to eat or what to study. She would occasionally make suggestions, but she was a big believer in independence and wanted very much for me to learn to be independent. In hindsight, that would seem to be an almost idyllic life long on fulfillment and short on responsibility or obligation, but getting on with it was still burning inside of me.
When I got to college, I was feeling anything but in a holding pen. I felt like I had arrived at where I was supposed to be. In some ways, they say that happiness is greatest when you can ignore both the past and the future and live in the moment. I feel like for most of college that is exactly how I felt. There were choices to make and it was hard not to think about bit about the future because others around me were far more focused on it than I was. The most driven were the pre-med students, but there were pre-law students, people who wanted to become engineers and those who were very focused on their specific discipline and become an expert in that field. I sort of drifted through my college years. I determined early on that engineering was less for me than I had thought, so I went about transferring to Arts & Sciences. I studied what interested me, and was much less driven by some vocational or future goal. To highlight this, when I was in the middle of my senior year and understanding that I would soon be forced to choose a next step in my path, the two alternatives that came to me were to diametrically opposed. I had a professor who wanted to sponsor me for advanced graduate work in Modern Revolutions, a topic I had shown some passion for (the Cuban Revolution, and the machinations in Chile). And then there was my friend Paul, who wanted me to join him in business school. I chose the latter, less for any specific reason and more because it seemed to offer me more time to decide my specific course. I went down the finance path because that was what Paul was doing, not because it called to me. But overall, college was not at all a holding pen for me. I was sorry to see it end.
But when I got into business school and was surrounded by people who knew exactly what they wanted and had dollar signs assigned to that path, I am forced to admit that as soon as I got in, I wanted to get out. It was a complete holding pen for me and I was most anxious to get out of it. I only spent a year in business school when the curriculum called for two years. Part of that was the time schedule of Paul’s attendance and part of it was that I did, indeed, look at it less as a learning experience and more as a means to an end, that end being a somewhat undefined job that would inform me about where I would be headed.
When I started in banking, I rationalized the choice as the best possible place to stay somewhat generalized and able to determine what I was meant to do. So, it is safe to say that banking started as another holding pen for me. I assumed I would spend about five years doing it in New York CIty and then decide what I really wanted to do and where I wanted to do it. I was in no way drawn to New York City or banking, but just found myself there. But then, something changed. I found I really liked the work and I very much liked the achievement orientation and success-driven path. It had never occurred to me that success was important to me, but suddenly it became an aphrodisiac to me. I was drawn to it. I rationalized it in many ways, mostly putting it at the feet of my non-existent relationship with my father, but there is no way to ever know for sure. And the next thing you know, five years became forty-five years as often happens in life.
I always knew my career in investment banking would come to an end some day. I used to say that I would leave the arena when I hit the wall. I never thought there would actually be a wall and that I would actually hit it, but I did. In fact, some might say that I hit the wall twice, once in 1989 and then again in 2007. The first time, I got up and carried on. The second time I really did not have that option, so I moved on. At several times during that long career, I did consider leaving the industry, so it might not be fair to say that it did feel like a holding pen at times. But for that to be the case, there should have been something that I wanted to or at least hoped to move on to, and I cannot recall ever envisioning such a thing. I did move on to other things, but they were opportunistic and somewhat random, and certainly unplanned.
Now that I’m on my final hilltop and somewhat retired, it’s easier for me to reflect on issues like this holding pen notion. One thing I can say unequivocally is that I am not in any sort of holding pen now. There is truly nothing I am waiting for. I am where I want to be and am happy to be. Strangely enough, the work I still do is the work that occupied me for forty-five years on Wall Street. I do not love the work for its content and subject matter, though I do find it interesting enough. I love the work because it is work and it give purpose and it makes me feel somewhat productive still. I like that the world at large finds value in what I have bothered to gather expertise in over the years and it is pleasing to me that my resume is worthy of monetization. I am proud of my accomplishments though I think it is only fair to say that they are no greater or lesser than anyone else’s, but they are mine and they are what I have to hang my proverbial hat on. If I were advising a younger person, I would tell them that there is nothing wrong with spending some time in a holding pen, but that their goal should be to find somewhere to reside that is more than a holding pen. Make that your home.