The characters in Taffy Brodesser-Ackner’s Long Island Compromise aren’t struggling Japanese-Americans in Portland but very rich East Coast Jews. In spite of these differences, there is a Mika Suzuki-type character in the novel. Jenny Fletcher, a woman with a $3-million-a-year, every year, inherited income, is almost 40, single, jobless, childless, rudderless, and massively depressed because her life has no meaning.
The reason why Mika and Jenny fail to develop lives of their own is identical. They are horrified by the humdrum existences of the regular people around them. For Jenny, even a passing thought that she could have ended up like her childhood friends, with families and careers, is humiliating. To live like everybody else? How degrading! No, both Mika and Jenny believe that they deserve something massively better and spend years upon years waiting for that life of glittering mega importance to find them.
Both women believe that glittering mega importance is conferred on a person by outside circumstances. Mika is certain that if she manages to see Hamilton on Broadway and be invited backstage to meet the cast, she will finally feel like she matters. Jenny Fletcher, on the other hand, has enough money to buy out every seat in the house at a Broadway musical but she knows none of it will help her feel important.
I was thinking about this today because we went to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the local community theater. I buy tickets for every performance of our local theater group, and it’s always great, although what can possibly beat a score by Andrew Lloyd Webber? But I was thinking that both Mika and Jenny would have been crushed by attending such an event. They would have felt diminished, even though neither achieved the height even of a molehill from which they could be diminished. And it’s just one but deadly mistake that brought them into their listless, depressed existence. They ended up like this because they never figured out that glittering importance comes from the inside. Outside circumstances don’t bathe you in light. Just the opposite, the light from the inside turns humdrum life events into a place of amazing adventure.
Small, tiny, utterly undeveloped, rudimentary personalities dream of surrounding themselves with pomp and circumstance to borrow a bit of somebody else’s importance. Large, interesting personalities feel as interesting at the grocery store as anywhere else.
Clarissa's Blog 
This is a horrifying attitude to anyone who’s mature and is older than a teenager, a young kid can be forgiven for wanting a life of adventure and fame and that the 9-5 life is boring. As a teenager, I wanted to travel the world and meet rock stars and be famous, but I grew out of that after high school and getting a job.
I’ve seen a similar attitude with teenagers I’ve worked with, virtually none of them want to go to college or get a normal job. The girls want to be influencers or TikTok stars and the boys want to be YouTubers or rappers, at least being a professional athlete or rock musician requires skills and talent. It’s even worse to see people in their 20s like this, normal people realize being an internet celebrity isn’t feasible and get a real job by this time
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Yes, it’s scary in someone who’s 25. Imagine a person who’s 40 and still in the grip of this mentality. Something must go very wrong somewhere for people to get so stuck.
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At least if you’re poor, the reality of needing a job sets in pretty quick.
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There are always people to mooch off if one’s really dedicated to the concept.
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There’s that.
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I think also it’s because pop culture doesn’t show people with average jobs who get by, a lot of characters in movies and TV shows seem to have impossibly glamorous jobs instead of normal jobs. I remember watching cartoons and sitcoms growing up where most characters had normal, sometimes boring jobs, but had lives outside of work.
As a kid, I was a big Simpsons fan and the Dad Homer Simpson was the safety inspector at a nuclear power plant which isn’t a glamorous or cool job. However, Homer had a life outside of work with his family, bowling league and hanging out at the bar and seemed content with his job. By today’s standards it sounds weird for someone to be content with a solid middle class job and a home in the suburbs, to a lot of young people that sounds boring but living a simple, comfortable lifestyle is more satisfying in the long run
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That’s why armies and gangs mostly recruit teenagers. There aren’t that many people over 25 who think risking your life for a cause is a great idea.
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In Ukraine, the average age of a soldier is 45.
That’s the generation that still understands the idea of the nation-state.
You are right in general but our case is an exception because it’s happening at a transitional time in history.
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And Russia’s army is just as old if not older.
WW I and II armies were in the millions. Putin had to recruit old men to get to half a million.
People have less children these days meaning less recruits for the military.
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My ex-Soviet parents and grandparents instilled in me the idea that “Just having a job and getting by day to day” is some sort of horrible oppressive existence and I must be a very dull person indeed if I find housework to be fulfilling. This attitude caused some problems for me as an adult because it made me feel like I was wasting away my life if I spent time on housework, and this is something I still struggle with.
But it was probably not that bad. My parents have jobs and manage OK in their North American lives, as do I. My grandparents channeled this attitude into reading lots of books and traveling, which probably made their life more interesting.
-YZ
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I feel at some point we lost something when it came to jobs, well lost several things really.
First a job didn’t used to be a job. Oh it was still work, don’t get me wrong, however most jobs were careers. You generally weren’t having to jump from job to job unless you truly hated your company, boss, etc. We don’t have that anymore. Note the wording people use. They always speak of their “job” never their career. That was lost and I think that the fact that it was allowed to disappear without being noted was truly a bad thing for society in general.
Then there is the wages. This is a multifaceted problem that goes well beyond the scope of this comment, so I’ll keep this part brief-ish. Companies always pay two types of wages. The first is the general wage. This is kept as low as possible, and they are right to do so as for every extra dollar a single worker makes per hour, that costs the company thousands more by the end of the year. The second type of wage is paid to an employee the company requires, one that is needed for the company to function. Those they have to offer high wages to or they will either work elsewhere or simple wont work for that company. Again the company is right to do this as without those essential workers, things stop working and the company doesn’t make any money.
Now as I stated companies give general workers the lowest wage workers will accept. When there is a glut of jobs available, general workers will go to the companies either paying the highest of those who offer the most benefits. This forces the companies who can’t hire workers, to raise their starting salary rates to attract new workers.
The opposite is also true, when the market is flooded with people looking for work, companies can lower their starting wages as people are desperate for jobs.
So back up to the 1950s/1960s. Lots of men died in War, this left lots of job openings forcing wages to go up to attract workers. Then women were convinced that working would grant them “freedom.” Now companies could lower starting wages as there is a glut of workers. It kind of stabilized when tons of new jobs were created in later decades where there were more openings than workers. Fast forward to today, by the figures given out by the federal government, we have had 33 million illegal aliens who have entered the country over the last 20 years. Those were the ones counted, which means its probably closer to 50 million. This represents an absolutely massive glut of people wanting jobs. The companies can offer starvation level wages, just barely ahead of federal minimum wage, and there will be people desperate for jobs. This is really bad.
If your wondering why starting salaries and wages haven’t gone up with inflation, this is a major part of it. Companies offer more money when there is fewer workers willing to work for them. As long as illegals are being allowed to flood into the country and live here, the wages will be artificially depressed.
This of course doesn’t even touch how government regulations, taxes, laws, as well as insurance companies are driving up the prices of everything which reduces how much purchasing power each dollar you have saved has. Which is why our parents and grandparents were able to have a house, two cars, vacations, 3 to 5 kids all on one salary and yet today a $20 dollar wage is considered to be barely enough to live off of in most parts of the country.
The last thing that was lost that I feel should be brought up, at some point and I have no idea when, though as usual I blame the 1960s, a job’s title was seen as more important than having a job or career. All of the sudden if you weren’t an executive, or a business owner, you were somehow seen as being worth less than someone who’s title was that, even if you made $100K more a year. This I think effected the mentality of the population making people less willing to accept well paying trades jobs, and instead go tens of thousands into debt for a “college education.”
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That’s a brilliant, thoughtful comment. Thank you so much. Many things are becoming clearer now.
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