The Unemployable Man - EPISODE 2 (The Second Freedom)

What if the anxiety, tension, and exhaustion you've carried for years aren't random at all? What if your body has been keeping score all along?

In this episode of The Unemployable Man, Ray Whitaker explores the hidden cost of spending a lifetime avoiding conflict, seeking approval, and living according to expectations that were never truly your own. Blending personal stories, humor, and hard-earned perspective, he reflects on therapy, purpose, aging, and the surprising freedom that comes from caring less about fitting in and more about becoming who you were before the world told you who to be. It's an honest conversation about healing, authenticity, and why the second half of life may be the most liberating chapter of all.

The Unemployable Man is a spoken-word series by Ray Whitaker featuring original essays about work, identity, memory, mental health, creativity, culture, and the ongoing business of becoming—and laughing at—yourself.

If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the show and leave a rating or review. It helps other listeners discover The Unemployable Man.

If these stories resonate with you, I'd be grateful if you'd share them with someone who might need to hear 'em.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Expectations. They can absolutely pollute your soul and tamp down your spirit, especially when you're younger. And they're coming from someone else. Coming up, the beauty of being older and realizing that all those pressures forced upon us as teenagers were merely tests of our resolve. And way too many of us failed. This is the unemployable man. I'm Ray Whitaker. I know there's a book out there called Your Body Keeps the Score. But you don't even need to read it. If you can reconcile right here and now that your body actually has been keeping score and it feels that way. And depending on your situation, you have been in um extra innings or sudden death for a while now. Or whatever sports analogy gets you there. Your body has been a receptacle for everyone else's seeming indifference to your sensitive nature. And though you may not want to admit that you are a sensitive type, you have to. Because it's not a weakness. Knowing what you are and how you operate is half the battle of living a peaceful life. It helps you proceed accordingly. That said, it's not a pre-existing condition of sorts that suggests that everyone else should have to amend themselves to suit you. Because there are folks out there who might not get you entirely. And they come at you like a fucking howitzer. And being someone who is stopped cold by confrontation, that's me, it really hurts. You take it as a personal commentary on your entire existence. And I know this sounds screwed up, but that's how you are, that's how I am. And I have found that if you ignore it long enough, it becomes, and it actually feels like, this gaping internal wound that never seems to heal. And if you don't deal with it, that ever-present knot in your gut is going to grow. And yeah, I know, there are umpteen self-help books out there, and groups where folks hold hands and dance and chant and make paper butterflies and all that shit. And if that works for you, terrific. But the engaging of a mental health professional truly is the best way to be guided out of that darkness. And if you've gotten to that point where you've taken your mental health solidly into consideration and you're just done being a battering ramp for other people's bullshit, I want you to take solace in the fact that something kind of wonderful happens naturally when you pass the 60 mark. You begin to realize almost exponentially that you never actually needed to adhere to any so-called level of social protocol. You know, worrying about this, that, and the other thing, or this or that person. What did you actually gain from it beyond a completely exhausted, wrung out soul? And when that realization arrives, even if you're on the verge of collecting social security like I am, this unexpected sense of freedom begins to wash over you. And again, this feeling comes a whole lot easier if, like I said, you've taken the initial step to work through your crap with a therapist. One, by the way, who does not feel it necessary to work through their own problems during your session, because that does happen. So, provided you have the right therapist, it definitely does pry open the door a bit more to afford you that feeling of freedom that I'm talking about. And this is gonna sound weird, but I want you to think about that scene in Braveheart when William Wallace screams freedom as his final word before being beheaded. And I want you to think about that symbolism, William Wallace losing his head. And this is all gonna make sense. I hope. When you and I were kids, we were all about freedom. We just never consciously thought about how valuable it was at the time. We just were free, that is. And then as graduation neared, now I'm talking about high school graduation. I'm not talking about preschool graduation or first grade to second grade graduation, which they do now, but as high school graduation neared, expectations began to ratchet up, and the freedom we once enjoyed became what seemed like this non-repeatable memory. Our ideals began to fade, our dreams just kind of, you know, grayed out, and an odd kind of compulsory adherence to imagined societal norms just silently infected us. So, in a way, we pretty much did lose our heads once we graduated high school. We locked arms with a lot of our peers, hopped on the next step conveyor belt to be sorted like so much goddamn luggage, and ended up at some institution of so-called higher learning. That accepted us. And what the hell is that anyway? Accepted us. That should have been a major red flag right there. To be acceptable in society, you first need to be accepted by some college or university, go through their idea of what you should know, and then get stamped for approval after four, six, or eight years. The fallacy that after all that time we're now better than we were before we got processed for distribution into so called civilized society. But that's not the way of it. All we really did was the next expected thing. We were indoctrinated to believe that that's just what you did. Even if we in our souls hated the thought of it, we allowed ourselves to be sandbagged into going to college. And maybe that's why we uh unwittingly learned a skill while attending whatever school it was that not only was not listed in the course catalog, but was not marketable at all. Drinking. Probably because it made us forget the pressure we were imposing on ourselves to be doing something we genuinely did not want to goddamn do. But to bring it back to the now. So we're over sixty. Even if you're not, just you know, go with it. The door is open for freedom to reenter our lives. But it's a different kind of freedom. It's the freedom to be who you always suspected you were. That is, before you started playing a game you didn't understand, you didn't feel like playing in the first place, and ultimately paid for with your mental and physical health. Secondarily, or equally important really, you care less and less about any kind of signaling or trends, or pleasing just about anyone who isn't within your own little sphere. Because that's how it's been for me. Beyond my wife and daughter, and maybe a minuscule circle of friends and extended family members, collectively, one or two, I am entirely divested emotionally. Being Irish and a former Catholic, that's a mountain of horseshit obligation conquered right there, so I am to be congratulated. But that is where I'm at, and it's glorious. That's not to say that I don't have my moments of crushing self-doubt, and I'm unnecessarily hard on myself to be better than I was the day before. But thanks to the hat trick of being 63, having gone through years of therapy, and will continue to do so, and having a loving and supportive family and my wife and daughter, my recovery time is a bit quicker than it was, actually a lot quicker than it was when I was in my 30s and forties, and 50s, for that matter. And honestly, you know, it's not terrible to be hard on yourself to a point, if only to keep you from being complacent about life. And I don't know if you're like this, but having purpose is the literal current that keeps my spiritual light on. And this is not one of those non-secular goddamn things. It's I'm talking about the life force that helps me swing my legs out of bed in the morning with oomph. It's what keeps a smile in my eyes and one eyebrow perpetually raised. So this is a very necessary conversation to have with yourself. What is your purpose? Not as a spouse, not as a parent, not as a worker, and certainly not as a voter. So please, for Christ's sakes, take your politics out of it, because at the end of your life, that shit doesn't matter. It never mattered. But what is it about you? Something you know you do well, that excites you, and completely lose track of time when you're engaged in it. You know, that generates excitement in your belly. In a word, you feel one hundred percent content with who you are. That's a real question, and one we'll address next time on the unemployable man. I'm Ray Whitaker.