The Boundaries We Choose
A career counselor arrived in New Orleans around 10 p.m. the night before a workshop at the annual National Association of Workforce Development Professionals (NAWDP) conference. Luggage, a Lyft to the hotel, and Minor, the driver who had agreed to take the fare.
No sooner were the bags in Minor’s burgundy Dodge Caravan than he started venting. Minor claimed that Lyft had stolen his money earlier that day. Not just today, he said. The company kept finding new reasons to cut into his earnings. He was furious about it.
Minor grew increasingly agitated through the 25-minute trip from the airport. His frustration escalated to the point he said he didn’t know what was keeping people from stealing from and hurting other people.
How long had he been driving? Eight years. He tried to start a limo company before the pandemic. Eventually he’d saved enough to buy his own Cadillac, but he didn’t renew his medallion. There was no business during the shutdowns. He wanted to buy a house, but now interest rates were astronomical. He wanted to start a business, have a family, get ahead. But, he said, at every turn, it seemed, every door that started to inch open ended up instead slammed by another boss that screwed him over, or another Lyft policy that got changed against his favor.
Minor’s frustration was palpable. It was scary: a late arrival to a city that wasn’t home, in a car with a man expressing a concerning level of anger and hopelessness.
Throughout the ride, the passenger vacillated between two extremes. At one, a tired traveler who had just taken two flights and needed to prepare for the next day’s talk. Missing a toddler and a husband. Feeling worried each time Minor’s voice shook with anger. Feeling like it wasn’t anyone’s job to listen to his anger. Wondering if he was venting to get a bigger tip. Wondering whether to complain to the ride-share company about how much he was badmouthing them.
At the other extreme, the mind drifted to recent instances of social violence. The shooting just the day before at the outlet mall in Texas. Jordan Neely, the young man who was put in a chokehold on the subway in NYC last week after expressing hopelessness and agitation about how his circumstances felt unsurmountable.
As that vacillation continued, Minor asked out loud how people do it, how do they get by in this country? Then he asked what the passenger did for work. There was a laugh.
“I’m a career counselor,” came the answer.
He burst out laughing, too.
“So, what would you counsel me to do?”
The questions started. One got his attention. What would he want to do if he could do anything? He talked about restarting his limo company. Then he remembered an old childhood friend who had a job driving for the Port of New Orleans. It paid surprisingly well, and Minor remembered that his friend said they were hiring. The friend had even given Minor his business card, he recalled. Where did he put it? He eased surprisingly quickly from a hopeless mindset into a resourceful one.
That burgundy caravan presented a fork in the road. Approach the exchange like a financial transaction (a service provider, a purchased ride), or approach it as a human interaction (a person having a bad day, and in that moment, enough inner resources to be kind). Choose to be boundaried and entitled (“this doesn’t feel safe. It’s not my job to listen to his problems.”), or to be vulnerable and open. Disregard the boundaries against strange men who presumed default access to attention and energy, boundaries that can take until the mid-30s to develop. Instead, the choice in that van was to be giving of trust, attention, and care, rather than defensive and picturing the worst possible outcome.
When the van stopped, he said thank you for listening. He said, “You’re a special person.”
Is that true?
Think about Jordan Neely. About how so many people are deep in the struggle, and how put upon so many of us feel when we encounter their struggles. How many similar potential interactions get dodged just by being silent, by walking faster, or by crossing the street, or changing seats on the bus.