THE RHETORIC OF LEAVING
This will be my last column. No more pontificating (which, as you know by now, I love to do) because I want to spend more time with my family. That’s right: I need to spend more time with my family.
I’m kidding. I am not going anywhere.
I just wanted to see what it feels like to try to come across as serious when saying something utterly preposterous. For a moment, I wanted to experience sounding like so many politicians and high-level executives who redefine their job departure—usually orchestrated or influenced by someone/something else—as a personal decision to spend more time with their family.
From a rhetorical standpoint, it’s a masterful explanation. After all, who could blame anyone for wanting to spend more time with their family? What could be more important?
Unfortunately, however, the storyline is often bogus. For many people, work is what’s most important. If family had been so near and dear, why would so many by their own admission have sacrificed so much for so long at the expense of family?
Spending time with family is a choice. In some cases, it is more of a challenge when you need to work two or three jobs just to put food on the table. But other times, people work long hours because they want to, because overworking gives them immense satisfaction. Reality check: there are no reluctant workaholics. And surely there are no workaholics who think about family at every step of the way, hoping that someday they will be able to spend more time with them.
Many politicians and high-level executives also have more choice about how they spend their time insofar as they exercise greater control over their schedules than the average worker and have more opportunities to include family into their schedules. Still, they would have us believe it has to be all work and no play.
On the other hand, who can blame someone from putting a favorable spin on their new unemployment status? Who would want to reveal the details about how they were burned out or thrown out? Or simply disillusioned? Or how they were brought down by scandal or disappointing job performance?
The I-want-to spend-more-time-with-my-family myth is understandable. It is a nicety, a protectionist move that benefits employer and employee by honoring the convention of engaging in civil discourse whenever possible, no matter how inauthentic it might be.
Okay, I have to leave now, not because I don’t have anything more to say, but because I want to spend more time with my family. I have waited for this moment for a long time. Does anyone know where they live?