Paying your dues

The phrase, “I’m just paying my dues,” is one of the most frequently evoked on a college campus. The students half-asleep utter it to their friends when they wake up hung-over after a night of partying to attend lecture. Professors utter it to one another when they look at budget cuts and realize their salary is half of their colleague’s.  

But what does it mean to pay one’s dues?  Does it mean to simply defer immediate pleasure in payment to a system set up long before one’s self?  Does it mean to accept unhappiness in the hope of future happiness?  

It means both of these things, perhaps.

It means, nearly always, to have a present feeling that is something of disappointment or boredom or frustration in the face of a power perceived to be greater or of more importance than one’s self.

This greater thing is sometimes a structure, a process that is set to be followed and has been followed for many generations. The power of the institution.

But, I wonder, is this structure giving as much as it takes? Is it worth unhappiness simply to have a path already laid out before oneself without effort?  

Some might argue that it is not simply the path, but also the fruition of the path:  the happiness that awaits somehow prearranged at the end.  

The internship, the degree, the job offer, even eternity itself in some belief systems.

Whatever the cost of the dues to be paid, the results are promised to alleviate all the annoyance of the paying.

But I take issue with these ideas. I take issue with the assertion that success must always be preceded with suffering.  

Granted, there are many successful people who have fought tooth and nail for their right to success. But to say that this fight is simply a known expenditure is to lessen its value and its emotional weight.

To say that all people must “pay their dues” is to draw equivalencies between the poverty-born millionaire and the bored business student in a mathematics class or the man in the McDonalds who hates his life and does not change it.

“I’m just paying my dues” is just a colloquial way of saying, “I’m unhappy and I don’t know why but since everyone else is, it must be a fact of life.”

Somehow, it seems too simplistic to suggest that people take control of their own trajectories.

But, maybe that is exactly what needs to be said.

Unhappiness in life is not a given. It is perfectly possible to enjoy every stage of a college career — and those who don’t are in the wrong degree path. It is perfectly possible to have the job one wants, the friends one wants, the life one wants.

There is no critical mass of frustration after which Disney paradigms take over and woodland creatures do one’s daily chores. To be happy always requires the effort and attention of the present and is not guaranteed by any path or institution.

And for those things in life that really are unavoidable — budget cuts, sleepy days, stubbed toes — it is perfectly possible to weigh the pros and cons and be done with it once and for all: no complaining. A job where you feel underpaid or a job elsewhere. Morning classes or no morning classes. Shoes or no shoes. Pick one and enjoy it.

And, for all our sakes, don’t pretend that your own unhappiness is written into the fabric of the universe.


E-mail: cmcglass@indiana.edu