When a Life Change Forces the Question

Underneath the current of occupation and activity, there runs in everyone a current of meaning. Usually grounded in early events — in one’s formative development, things that stick, go unresolved, or are rich enough to form a substrate that shapes one’s sense of self. To the extent one is connected to this lode, one can have a sense of meaning, purpose, and direction. To the extent one is not connected, life can feel emptier, and the occupation and actions of life can feel like rote activity. One might feel adrift, or not quite know what one is doing, or why. That lode, that stream that runs underneath, is different for everyone. It doesn’t follow that it is always grounded in early life history — though inevitably that aspect is knitted into whatever follows that feels important, including the meaningful relationships one forms later, like those with one’s children.

As often as not, other occupations are loud enough that these deeper currents don’t call for attention. Work, family, interests — these also give meaning, even if the meaning is partial. Until something happens, like a life change. Chosen or not, wanted or dreaded, a significant change interrupts how and with what one had previously occupied oneself. That structure, which had been holding everything in place — including the distance from the deeper current — shifts. And with the shift, something surfaces.

George Yamata had earned his way to EVP of Operations at Sierra Valley Food Distribution — starting in warehouses and could now handle food logistics in his sleep. Sierra’s president Stan was retiring and George was his obvious replacement. He was looking forward to it: better pay for less work, the title, the perks.

Instead, when he got the email offering him the top job of “EVP Supply Chain Initiatives” — it could not have been clearer to George that he was being sidelined, moved out of the control loop. The Board had decided to bring in fresh blood for the top job, and a potential successor who would get George’s job with a better title.

Thursday evening was when George had to drive to Redwood Homes, where his parents had lived for 15 years. He did not so much dread these visits as find them deadeningly boring. The same anxious questions about his job security, as if they feared he was not doing everything possible to have a job at all. About the grandkids and the same worries about them. Not only the same drill, but the same lack of affect and connection he’d known all his life. Now approaching their 90s, they had both been interned in a Japanese camp, and George could not remember a time when they were not organized around that fear of loss of security and the mild, joyless demeanor with which they seemed to accept good and bad developments.

Driving, George processed. His thoughts swarmed faster than usual. Would he even have any direct reports? Would he get the retirement party befitting his role when he did? How would he make sure his parents did not believe he had been demoted? That thought alone made his arms warm, which swept up into his head. And then the unthinkable — which he dismissed as soon as the thought came. What if he left? How else could he live with the public humiliation that would be obvious every day until he retired?

George went through the following weeks rotely. Nothing else was required — everything was known, there was nothing in his job, challenging as logistics and national supply was, that required anything new from him. For now, nothing had changed, just the gnawing worry about the future that barely reached his awareness. At his Friday night poker game weeks later, Callum, the county’s director of emergency services, arrived late for the game. He was riled up about the imminent departure of Burt, the emergency management logistics lead — for the private sector. Burt was burned out, the pay too paltry to support the constant crises of fires and floods and lack of resources — and shrewd enough to get out before the crisis season started yet again. Callum was angry, but more worried. We don’t have the capacity to prevent a catastrophe to the foothill communities, he said. At this George’s eyelid fluttered, while he asked Callum a series of questions demonstrating his perfect command of logistics. His parents’ nursing home, after all, was in the way.

The next day, Callum, who knew about George’s reorg, called him. Would you be willing to take this job? You could do it with your hands tied, he said. We need you — your community needs you.

George rejected the idea out of hand. His job was moving groceries, not people, heavy machinery, natural disasters, government bureaucracies. For 40 years he had known every detail of his supply chain — the idea that the principles could be extrapolated for other uses was simply unfamiliar to the point of unimaginable. Plodding through the routines at work though, his otherwise unoccupied mind found itself wandering to the logistics of emergency management. In his stricken region of southern California it was impossible to avoid — updates about preparations; weather forecasts that used to be predictable and were now charged with a tension they never used to carry; updates about the aftermath of burnt communities. His thoughts went to Redwood Homes, itself aware of its danger. If it came to it, residents would be moved further inland. George knew the location. Not the cool, lush foothills his parents knew but an isolated building baking in a comfortless arid region, like being herded into —

At this George’s thoughts broke as he realized tears were falling on his face. Utterly startled, he pulled off the road. He had not wept since early childhood — not that he could ever remember, actually. Snippets of memories came to him that he did not know he had. Pictures taken by the authorities during the internment. His parents’ frozen demeanor as they clutched each other’s hands at the return of his brother in a casket after the Vietnam war. A look of despair and emptiness, and something worse. Like they had nothing left that could feel hurt.

George dug his fists into his eyes to stop the flood of feelings and memory.

A week later, he called Callum.