My mandate

"Endure." Or, when I am particularly close to collapse, "Survive."

Every day my body tries to protect me from work. It does this by inducing a state of torpor, about an hour before I have to go there; it's difficult to focus during this period, or to do anything but doze. I can hardly accuse my instincts of working wrong, when every time I go to that place I do not return better fed, warmer, or happier. Instead, I come back wounded, albeit to a minor degree. But although I've often asked myself whether its retention is the work of desperation, I haven't quit the job yet. Neither do I plan to, before graduating; I see myself enduring another summer and another winter. The benefits outweigh the harms; it's not as if I always cry after coming home.

One of my worst days at UPS, recently, was this last one; as is sometimes the way of things, it was created by the day that preceded it, one of the best. This better of two days was frigid, so frigid that half the unloaders didn't show up. As a result, the packages came onto the slide far more slowly than usual, so that the loaders weren't overwhelmed, and jams were rare. However, half the sorters were also missing, including a few of the best; resultingly, I worked with extra speed to keep the packages from piling up. (One of the supervisors has nicknamed me "Speedy", to my annoyance.) Since my appetite had been strong that day, I was able to keep up the pace for nearly five hours, sweating in my t-shirt, in the five degrees Celsius. (The surrounding machinery keeps the slide about ten degrees warmer than the trucks.) When I held up my hand near the end of the shift, I observed it to be trembling. The next day, as I said, was a bad one.

Perhaps it is now wrong to say that it's my mandate to endure, because it is now my pride to have endured, and I no longer need repeat it to myself. Through adversity I've become strong, almost absurdly so; and with that strength comes its overflowing. On the decreasingly rare days when I'm more than up to my job, I see the entire hub in a new light, my own light. The location no longer seems hostile, and I realize I could be content here, with a few changes; the UPS system works by opening opportunities for advancement after an initial ordeal, to jobs that are better-paying and easier, certainly easier to endure. At times like this I feel that the final reward is to forever dwell above one's circumstances.

This, this, is a danger to me, though a small one. To be superior is a mean goal, for it depends on the mean. After finally acquiring the strength or the means to do something more than simply endure, the next segment is to work against the conditions you had to endure, for your past's sake, and for the sake of all the people who didn't have the perversity to put so much excess energy into the job. It made you weep week after week, as you went "above and beyond" in a way that eventually gave you more strength, more energy to waste. Now will you recommend to everyone else that they, too, drive themselves until "endure" becomes "survive," in order to feel content later?