By Prince Gora
Say you are about to wrap up a two-year master’s program on a scholarship and have got two job offers lined up. After carefully weighing each offer and all the possible risks involved, you grudgingly decline one and bet on the other. You sign the employment contract long before you even finish your thesis and, of course, long before graduation. Still, you’re nervous because you’ve heard too many stories of rejected work permits, so you keep your fingers crossed and avoid making sudden changes in your life.
But guess what? The work permit comes through in record time! With all lose ends tied up, you finally resign from your part time job and plan a two-week vacation so that you can start your dream job well-rested and ready.
Everything is going so smooth that the realist, chess player in you cannot see anything going wrong at this point because all your chess pieces are perfectly protected.
And then, all of a sudden, checkmate!
How did everything go wrong and so suddenly? What exactly went wrong? Well, I lost the job I had decided to bet on before I even began it.
Did I do something wrong? No, not really. As far as I can tell I just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
A representative of the the company I was set to work for called me one Wednesday afternoon to inform me that the company had just lost one of its biggest contracts following a bidding process and would have to undergo downsizing with immediate effect. By Norwegian law, when a company undergoes downsizing, the least experienced and least senior people have to be let go first. Just like that, my fate was sealed.
I tried going for a walk when I first received the news but my feet weren't carrying me fast enough so I switched to a bicycle instead. And boy, did I cycle? Three hours and sixty kilometers, trying to clear my head and take it all in.
I had spent over two months realigning my life towards this new job. I’d quit my part-time jobs, spent countless hours researching the industry, reshaping my routines and social life for this new chapter. I had reached out to people who could guide me, revised old knowledge, sped up my Norwegian lessons, changed vacation plans and canceled conferences. I was doing everything I could to show up ready. And then, with one phone call, it was all taken away.
I am quite cautious in life and have been called a persimist by some, though I prefer realist, because of my unwillingness to believe in smooth sailing. I always try to anticipate all the possible scenarios and prepare accordingly as a strong believer of Murphy's law that, 'Anything that can go wrong will go wrong... at the most inopportune time.' Nonetheless, I could very well have been blindfolded because I didn’t see this one coming.
I’ve been immensing myself in stoicism principles lately and maybe that's how I survived this one. After a few days, I discovered that I wasn't the only one facing the chop so I figured that this almost certainly has repurcusions on the company as well. This prompted me to put myself in the company’s shoes and when I did, I instantly softened up because the situation didn't look any better from that end either.
I also remembered and reread one of my old writings from 2020 that dealt with loss. It was a much smaller, almost insignificant loss then but the wisdom of it not only brought me back to life but also encouraged me to put this on a piece of the web as well because this could come in handy one of these days.
I vowed to live this chapter with the words I wrote back in 2020 that, 'When things don't go your way in life, sometimes it may be a good idea to simply take your loss, raise up your head and move on.'
