Quiet Desperation

Job interviews
Sitting before panels
It isn’t the sitting I despise
But the waiting —

Hours, days, weeks, months
All swallowed whole
Consumed by dread
Obsessing over outcomes
Futures branching from futures
From interviews —
Days and weeks lost
To useless churning thoughts

Rehearsing questions never asked
Crafting answers never spoken —
All to chase a fleeting goal
When I can’t even name
What the best path might be
Or if I’d want it
Could bear it

Why these interviews —
Panels assembled
Probing one soul
Picking apart a life
To extract some proof

Why must I perform
Parade my worth
My skills, my past —
Prove I am better
Than strangers I’ll never meet

Why endure this churn
These endless rehearsals —
Futile, draining
Timing every word

Scripted performances
In interviews, exams
Presentations, speeches —
Every moment staged

Why can’t we just speak
Human to human
No scripted questions
No rehearsed replies —
Just a voice
A call
A moment unenforced
To know someone truly
As humans might
No canned questions
No sales pitch
No forced displays
No judgement cast

Yet judge they must
Everyone a judge
Panels, managers
Doctors, therapists —

All weighing, scoring, recording
Reports upon reports
Sorting, sifting
Granting, denying
Jobs, visas, admissions, exits —
Every step a checkpoint
Every moment a gate

Just to reach tomorrow
There’s an application form
An interview
A panel waiting —
Always judging
Roadblocks, guards
Barriers everywhere —
This path open, that one closed
No one speaks
All scrutinize

And they wonder why
Minds unravel —
Anxiety, depression, retreat
Lives stalled, repeating
Decades spent on familiar paths
Safe from roadblocks
Yet trapped in place

What choice remains
For those who refuse
To perform, to play the part —
Just to step into tomorrow
To live anew
Unjudged, unbound

Mass of men
In state of quiet desperation
Still so