When's YOUR Time?

Midway through my college major in professional writing, it occurred to me that come graduation, I would be more likely to find a job writing ad copy—the words to TV, radio, and print advertisements—than, say, The Great American Novel. But as I looked into the breadth of that media, I brushed up against the wall we all encounter when considering the limitations of our choices.

"What if I am asked to work up an ad campaign on a product or service I might have qualms about selling?"

My first thought was of future major league all-star Vance Law telling me when we played ball together as kids that his father, Pittsburgh Pirates ace Vernon Law, was once offered $15,000 to endorse a popular brand of cigarette. A large sum in those days, the potential paycheck struck his funny bone.

"But I don't smoke!" the Cy Young Awardee chuckled.

"Right. But you wouldn't have to. In fact we'll pay you the full fifteen grand to say that you absolutely do not smoke; but if you did, you'd smoke our brand!"

My second thought was of the counsel I received when Kari and I sat down to discuss our upcoming wedding with her Uncle Duff, the minister who would perform our ceremony.

"So, Scott, I've known Kari since she danced in diapers at Waikiki, but tell me more about you, what you've been studying, what you plan to do with your writing degree."

When the conversation got round to my concerns about a potentially uncomfortable profession, knowing I knew something about the theatre, Elder Marion Duff Hanks rehearsed with us the contraversial reveal at the end of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House.

"At the deciding moment of Ibsen's tale, when Torvald confronts Nora about her independent decision to leave him, she give us the iconic line,

'Before all else, I am a human being.'

Do you understand what I'm saying?"

He knew I hadn't and tacked to a less sophisticated example.

"Suppose you get your first job and it's not to write ad copy, only to proof it. (You don't always begin at the top, you see.) And on your first day you are handed a small paragraph to review. To your chagrin (I know you don't drink and I know why), the paragraph is part of an ad for a wine company. But you're not being paid to drink against your will nor for how doing your job makes you feel. You've been hired for results regardless of how they might impact your standards. (There are limits to the compromise you'll make, of course. And you'll know them when they confront you. 'Before all else, [Nora was] a human being'.) When you learn your trade, you'll eventually earn the right to choose your own assignments. When that day comes, you'll know what to do."

Soon after we were married, Kari and I moved to Los Angeles, where in my first job interview, the copywriter who came up with Ernest and Julio Gallo's memorable slogan, "We will sell no wine before its time," advised me, Baviaan-to-leopard, that ...

"The game has gone into other spots; and my advice to you, Leopard, is to go into other spots as soon as you can."

... which I promptly did, though not before connecting Uncle Duff's prescient dots.

"When you learn your trade, you'll eventually earn the right to choose your own assignments. When that day comes, you'll know what to do."

Before all else, how would you describe yourself right about now in your life? When it's your time—and I'm thinking that by now it probably is—which 'wine' have you chosen to sell or not? Which 'cigarettes' never to smoke? What color are your spots and is that particular shade working for you?

(And if you, like me, find yourself at times metaphorically challenged, let me put my question a simpler way.)

Now that it's your time, how will you endeavor to become/remain who you are before all else?

Scott Knell is a social thinker and change scientist fascinated by individuals and institutions in transition. To read his impressions on Being and Becoming, visit his personal blog at Indirections I Have Lived By.

? 2023 Scott Knell, all rights reserved.