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I didn’t get married until I was 40 years old. This was largely because of rampant bigotry in the dating world. I grew up on Long Island where a sizable portion of the eligible females in New York City, Nassau County, and Suffolk County were non-white (roughly 40 percent). And many black, Hispanic, and Asian women wanted nothing to do with a white dude.
But wait, it gets worse. My prime dating territory was Nassau County. Nassau County, in turn, was roughly 16 percent Jewish, and a lot of Jewish women wanted nothing to do with the goyim. Throw in lesbians and white female swirlers and it’s a wonder I got married at all.
Reality Check
Okay, let’s get real. Discrimination had nothing to do with my failure to get married before 40. While I was growing up, there were roughly 5.4 million females combined in New York City, Nassau County, and Suffolk County. Not all of those females were eligible, and not all of them were age appropriate. Let’s for argument’s sake say that only 20 percent of those females were eligible and age appropriate. If that’s the case, there were roughly 1,080,000 potential mates for me to woo. Some of those roughly one million potential mates, as already pointed out, wanted nothing to do with a Christian white dude. But many black, Hispanic, Asian, and Jewish women did. And an overwhelming percentage of Christian white women certainly did. My guess is that roughly 80 percent of those potential mates were perfectly okay with a Christian white dude. This means my pool of potential mates was roughly 860,000.
The main reason I didn’t get married until I was 40 was because I was a grade-A asshole in my teens and for much of my 20s. I didn’t begin to really de-asshole myself until my early 30s, and I didn’t completely de-asshole myself until my late 30s. (Haha! Mrs. Groovy may vehemently dispute my contention that I was no longer an asshole by the time I reached 40.) My biggest problem, then, wasn’t that 20 percent of my potential mates wanted nothing to do with a Christian white dude. My biggest problem was that upwards of 90 percent of my potential mates wanted nothing to do with an asshole. Once I de-assholed myself, I had all the opportunity I needed.
Victim Mentality Defined
For the purposes of this post, you have a victim mentality if you…
- Obsess over the few who do and will treat you poorly and ignore or discount the great many who don’t and won’t.
- And you use the existence of those few bad actors to rationalize your failure to do anything that might better yourself and your circumstances.
I never had a victim mentality when it came to dating. For whatever reason, I never expected every eligible female out there to give me a fair shot at her heart and her velvety treasures. [Mrs. Groovy here. Oh, God. Really?!!!] I did, however, have a victim mentality when it came to work.
For 21 years I worked for a very dysfunctional highway department in a very dysfunctional municipality. Not only did they both provide bad service, but they were both run like its leadership (i.e., commissioners and politicians) went to the Johnny Friendly School of Management. If you wanted to get ahead, you had to pay tribute to the Republican Party—the party that ran my municipality for nearly the entire duration of my public service career.
On the other hand, New York City’s government, or at least one aspect of it, anyway, was run much less like a mob-controlled union. I know this because a good friend of mine was hired by the New York City Fire Department in 1985, a year before I was hired by my dysfunctional municipality. And as I languished in my public service career, he flourished. At the ten-year point of his career, he was a captain running a firehouse. At the ten-year point of my career, I was shoveling asphalt and scraping dead animals off the road. Now here’s the kicker. My friend’s rise was predicated on competency and promotional exams. That’s it. He didn’t have to pay tribute to whatever party was in power in NYC to get ahead. All he had to do was be great at his job and study his ass off.
Quick aside. My friend is now a battalion chief. From what I can gather, that position is upper-level management, just a couple of notches below the commissioner class. And again, he got to that level by being great at his job and passing promotional exams. No tribute was ever necessary to the party in power.
Now, my friend was smarter and more disciplined than I was. So it’s understandable why he achieved more on the career front than I did. But he wasn’t that much smarter and more disciplined. And it just burned me that he was managing a New York City firehouse and I was picking up dead animals.
So what did I do?
Did I consider trying to find a more enlightened employer of dead-animal picker uppers (i.e., low-skilled labor)?
Did I consider upping my skills so I had more options other than being employed by a dysfunctional municipality?
Did I even consider playing the Johnny Friendly game and start to purchase my advancement?
No, no, and no. I did however become obsessed with the injustices perpetrated by my dysfunctional municipality. “Why couldn’t my municipality be more like the FDNY?” I often groused. “Why couldn’t I take tests to get ahead?” “Why did I have to kiss Republican ass in order to get ahead?”
I responded to the injustices of my dysfunctional municipality with a classic case of victim mentality. All I did was complain about “the system” and mock the political toadies in my department. I certainly didn’t play the political game—that would be too demeaning to someone with my “rarefied virtue.” I certainly didn’t take stock of all the other employers in my midst and give one of them a try—that would have taken me out of my comfort zone. And I certainly didn’t buckle down and hone my human capital—that would have required too much work. Nope, all I did was rail against the evil Republicans and rationalize my unwillingness to take any constructive action that might advance my career (“I’m too old to learn new skills,” “I don’t want to jump ship and start all over again at some different outfit,” “I’m not going to waste my time getting really good at my job when the only people being promoted are the politically-connected bootlickers”).
The Good News
The good news is that shortly after I passed the 10-year mark in my public service career, something clicked. It suddenly dawned on me that railing against people and things I couldn’t fix was a colossal misuse of my mental bandwidth. It was far more honorable and potentially more fruitful to fix myself and take advantage of whatever opportunities I happened to see or unearth. In other words, I dropped my victim mentality and started to de-unskill myself and de-excuseify myself.
And just like when I de-assholed myself, once I completely de-unskilled myself and completely de-excuseified myself, opportunity started to abound.
Here are three concrete ways I de-unskilled and de-excuseified myself during the second have of my public service career.
- I discovered Access databases and dedicated myself to becoming a kick-ass database developer. Every night I spent at least an hour honing my VBA and SQL skills.
- I stopped complaining and gossiping at work. I ain’t going to lie. This hurt. Complaining and gossiping was my way of dealing with all the clowns and jokers that besieged my workplace. But complaining and gossiping is like sugar. It feels good in the short run but is ruinous in the long wrong. You are what you repeatedly do. Complain and gossip a lot and you’ll be a petty person. Remain above the fray and you’ll be a consequential person.
- I eventually got over myself and started playing the Johnny Friendly game. This was especially true in the three years prior to Mrs. Groovy and me leaving Long Island for Charlotte, North Carolina. Yes, it was demeaning. But it mainly entailed buying tickets to Republican-sponsored cocktail parties and golf outings. And since I didn’t have to go to these cocktail parties and golf outings (I donated the tickets), the demeaning factor was bearable.
Now, I’m not going to overwhelm you with the details of how the second half of my public service career changed for the better. Those details are fodder for a future post. I will say this, though: It’s amazing what competency plus affability plus a little payola can do for one’s advancement in a dysfunctional municipality. It’s also amazing what the first two components of my self-improvement strategy—being extremely competent at a valuable skill and being exceedingly affable—can do for one’s advancement in the private sector. I learned first hand upon arriving in Charlotte that there are no shortage of employers who value those two qualities and are willing to treat those who have them very well.
Getting All the Opportunity You Need
Okay, let’s wrap this up in a nice little package. Here is the Groovy two-step way of getting all the opportunity you’ll ever need.
First, never forget that in the key areas of life—family, health, housing, education, employment, happiness, and love—there are far more good actors than bad actors. Don’t let the bad actors discourage you. Ignore them with extreme prejudice and give the good actors a chance.
Second, the best way to give the good actors a chance is to fix yourself. I gave open-minded potential mates a chance by de-assholing myself. The result was marriage to the fabulous Mrs. Groovy. I gave more-enlightened bosses and employers a chance by de-unskilling and de-excuseifying myself. The result was a tolerable end to my public service career and a fabulous ten-year run during my brief private-sector career.
Final Thoughts
That’s all I got, groovy freedomist. What say you? Is my definition of the victim mentality legit? And more importantly, I believe that opportunity abounds in this country. As long as you fix your mindset and fix yourself, I don’t care what hardship life has slapped your face with, you’ll have all the opportunity you’ll need. Is that belief legit? Or is it more of my alt-FI bullshit. Let me know what you think when you get a chance. Peace.
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