The Matchmaker

My friend Matt is getting married in May, and informs me that he has deliberately seated me next to a young woman who recently graduated from Harvard Law and is entering a corporate firm by the name of Bonecrusher & Bonecrusher, despite having ABSOLUTELY NO INTEREST in law or its corporate variants.

"I thought you two might have a lot to talk about," says Matt.

We'll see. I don't have much interest in life-coaching, although I have been known to invent a good catchphrase to illustrate the necessity of following one's own path. ("That is a really good line," says Matt. "You'll totally fuck her up with that.")

Anyway, the conversation reminded me of another anecdote.

I once volunteered in a homeless shelter with a group of young Emory University alumni. These being Emory grads, their idea of helping the homeless was congregating in a corner as far away as possible from the destitute, and performing completely useless tasks that provided no direct benefit for the shelter residents.

I met a young woman whom, like many Emory graduates, worked in some anonymous corporate capacity: consulting, finance, corporate law. She told me she found her job unfulfilling, and secretly harbored wishes of a dream job.

The dream job was matchmaking. She said she held an uncanny talent for knowing whether two people would hit it off, and had successfully connected several of her acquaintances in relationships. She wondered whether she could parlay that talent into a full-time job.

I told her not only that she could, but she should. It's exceedingly rare to meet someone with such a specific dream job; the specificity of the dream implies its intensity.

She demurred, and repeated the mantra of every young graduate of what used to be liberal arts colleges (and now function as young consultant mills):

"It's not practical."

I often find myself telling the story of this young woman, mainly because a) her life trajectory is so archetypal among my fellow Emory alumni, and b) because of the discrete, quantifiable consequences of this young woman's trepidation.

The consequences for her professional life should be obvious. Decreased job performance, less fulfillment and satisfaction: the usual litany of job-related complaints.

But one also has to wonder: how many people are single and miserable because this girl couldn't step up and DO HER JOB? How many people have missed meeting the love of their lives, because she wasn't there to make it happen? How much less happiness is there in the world because this girl came up short? In her case, the collateral damage wrought by her failure to act becomes all too clear.

And on a completely irrelevant (but no less significant) note, I will also note that this was an attractive young woman, most likely single. And I can't speak to the quality of her love live at the time, but I can raise a hypothetical question. Whom would you rather date: the girl who is pursuing her dream, or the girl making somebody else's Powerpoint slides?

If she knew how much rested upon her decision, I am positive she would have decided differently.