What we want from a career narrative is some moral thrust, some meaningful story we can, as [Richard] Sennett suggests, tell our children. The old narrative was “I worked hard and therefore succeeded” or sometimes “I screwed up and therefore failed.” But a life of only intermittently rewarded effort—working hard only to be laid off, and then repeating the process until aging forecloses decent job offers—requires more strenuous forms of explanation. Either you look for the institutional forces shaping your life, or you attribute the unpredictable ups and downs of your career to an infinitely powerful, endlessly detail-oriented God.
quoteswithmeaning.com