PenPenWrites

My friend Carol and I are starting out on a walk-and-talk when she blurts out this admission: "I'm a nervous wreck." Carol is normally a no-nonsense, assertive person; her remark is out of keeping with her hard-driving persona. The reason for the agita? Her 23-year-old son–he who graduated from a top college and has just finished up a low-paying internship with a nonprofit; he who she has been prodding and pushing to get off his duff and find a job–has finally been offered one and accepted it. He started working a week ago–when Carol and her husband took their son to the airport to catch a flight to the city where he'll be employed. A flight to Juba. Yes. Juba, the capital of southern Sudan–the country that broke away from northern Sudan, won its independence and is just beginning to set up a government and infrastructure. Juba does not have much of a Western presence–although that is growing. Carol's son is part of the opening wedge of that growth.

I think back to my own anxieties when my daughter went to live in Berlin for a year. But Berlin is an international capital and my daughter was attached to a major education institution. My worries were about missing her and her family–not about whether she would be safe or whether Americans would be welcome. Carol's son is attached to an NGO (Non Government Organization) that is in Juba on its first mission there.

I try to ease her worries. I talk about what an adventure this is for her son, what a challenge. If he doesn't do something like this at 23, when will he? Certainly not when he's started a family and has a mortgage and children to support. I tell her about the recent NYTimes article "What if the Secret to Success is Failure," which posits that happy, successful people tend to be ones who face challenges–even if they fail at them. I also remind her that her son is smart, that he lived in an Arab-speaking country for a semester, has studied Arabic and is an athlete who's used to team play–all of which will help keep him safe.

It is cold comfort. There's only so much positive you can say to the parent of a grown child who has put himself in a potentially dangerous situation–not out of some sense of adventure but to get a job. The latter was made particularly clear the night before he left. A neighbor who has a son the same age as Carol's, stopped by to wish him well and tell him how much she admired what he was doing. "My son is hanging around here, doing the boring city thing," she told him. His response: "I wish I were doing the boring city thing, but this is the only job I was offered."

No wonder Carol is a nervous wreck. It's not like her son is going off to pursue a dream he's had all his life–to walk across India or climb the Chilean Andes. He's no happier about this "great adventure" than his parents are. That's the reality of the Great Recession, and its follow-up, the Great Contraction. Jobs are hard to find. Our grown children are shipping out to the far reaches of the Third World to make a living–even though they would really, really rather not go there.