I used to believe principles were absolute. I grew up (like many people) reading stories about principled and idealistic people who gave up their lives for their honor. According to these, you’re either the hero who upholds your principles, or you’re the petty villain who gave up and made compromises.
After I grew up, I started to realize, life isn’t that clean cut. I realized that if a person is able to uphold a principle simply because that principle was never challenged, and they never need to make a difficult decision, that’s not being principled, that’s having privilege. And perhaps we should have a little bit of compassion for those who make the compromises.
I studied art in college, went to grad school for it.
When I graduated, I wanted to be a concept artist for games or movies. Of course, concept artist is the most coveted position in game production and the competition is insane. But, I have a dream. I’m going to go for it. Only losers give up. I found a non-game related desk job that paid the rent, I took out more student loans and got a second BA while working full time. I participated in various online art competitions.
And come 2008, the financial crisis hit. I got laid off.
I didn’t give up. I got my unemployment insurance and COBRA. I hunkered down and kept at it. It was depressing. So many game companies had gone under. I would send out resumes to THQ one week, and two weeks later, read the news about their bankruptcy.
6 months passed, my COBRA expired.
I didn’t get a single return from any game companies.
So, I lowered my expectations. Started to apply for any positions I can do, production, QA, anything, art or not. As long as I could get a game-related job.
Another 3 months passed, more companies went under. I wasn’t sure if I could get an extension of my unemployment.
I started to send resumes to non-game companies. Any job would do. As long as they needed people, and I could do the job, I would do it.
Mind you, I was living at my parents’ place. I didn’t have a mortgage, my student loan was on furlough. Yes, I was unemployed for 9 months, but I wasn’t in any real danger of being homeless.
In desperation, I went to blackjack dealer school, since casinos were the only place still hiring contractors.
I talked to people who had graduated and were working as dealers, getting to know the casino industry better, about what my future life might be. And at that moment, I gave up. I thought this was my life now. Finish training, get a job at a casino, and stand for long hours, in second-hand smoke, doing basic math for the rest of my life. Joint pain and lung cancer, a one-bedroom house in the middle of nowhere (California casinos are all built in the desert).
That’s how easy it was to kill my dream: all it took was a bad economy and 12 months of unemployment.
Of course, I eventually bounced back and found a job in the video game industry.
But I’ll always remember that moment when I accepted defeat and got myself ready for a different life. And that gave me a bit of a different perspective about people and their choices.
When I see people who work in retail, cashiers, cleaning crew, waitresses, telemarketers… The jobs that people look down upon. People think these people are either lazy or stupid. People play pranks on telemarketers and laugh about it.
They aren’t stupid or lazy or evil. They’re just desperate. They make compromises.
If a telemarketing company was hiring back in mid-2009, I would jump at the opportunity, and be ridiculed by the people I called. Imagine if it’s you, in that position, imagine if you have kids and mortgages, and your house was about to get foreclosed. Would you not take that job? Would you willing to go homeless because telemarketing as an industry has dubious morals and you wouldn’t lower yourself to that level?
And I realized the reason I get to be a principled person the majority of the time isn’t that I’m a better person. It is because I got lucky. I’m privileged enough to never have my principles challenged. I never need to choose between “feeding myself” and “my principles”. I never need to choose between “take your boss’s racism” and “be fired”. I never need to choose between “let your husband beat you” and “leave your home and live in a shelter”. I never need to choose between “my sexual orientation” and “my job”.
And if I were to put into that situation, I honestly don’t know how I would choose.
So now, my principle is: be kind and have compassion.
And I hope if my principle is challenged, I would have the courage to do the right thing
-Feifei Wang
