An Essential Skill

I have received the following request for a blog post:

We’re asking others like you to write an article to post on your blog about what you consider to be a valuable, marketable skill as part of our “Most Marketable Skill” Campaign in honor of the class of 2014. The job market is a scary place, hopefully this campaign will help it seem less daunting to this year’s graduating class!

What is it that you think is essential for success? We want to read about the skill that you personally feel is the most important, how you acquired or plan to acquire the skill, and why it’s so indispensable for people going into the workforce.

As much as I resent the implication that there is anybody “like me” anywhere in the world, I will oblige.

One thing that is absolutely essential for success in any area of life is self-awareness that allows one to solve one’s psychological problems. The moment you start seeing the job market as “a scary place”, as opposed as en exciting place that offers you many new opportunities and adventures, this should be a sign to you that there is a psychological problem leading you to experience these fears and that this problem should be addressed sooner rather than later. The same goes for the dating market or pretty much any area of peaceful existence.

My most important skill in life is precisely this. I know how not to hide from my own psychological issues behind “the world is a scary and unpredictable place,” “bad shit can happen at any time,” “society tells us to be miserable,” “huge societal forces prevent me from living exactly the way I want to live, “I am being judged and persecuted”, etc. And the most crucial piece of knowledge I can share is that nobody is obligated to live this way and feel daunted by these thoughts. They are not part of normal existence. Misery is not part of normal existence. Life should and can be about happiness.

I have not had an easy life. I’ve shared a lot on this blog but it doesn’t even come to 5% of all that I have had to overcome. And still, I am convinced that all this “the world is a scary place” nonsense is a result of intellectual laziness and a refusal to address one’s psychological problems.

Something tells me, though, that this is not the response the reader was looking for.