Where am I?

by Paul Kandarian

I was reading an article about some successful person the other day and they were asked a question successful people are often asked: “How did you get to where you are today?

Then something hit me: where I am today is not where I was yesterday, nor where I will be tomorrow. In fact, where I am today might change by tomorrow, or an hour or minute or second from now. I could scratch off a million-dollar lottery ticket and on my happy way to cash it, step outside and get hit by a bus.

Life is fluid and fleeting and fickle. Life changes day by day, second by second. The only certainty is that nothing is certain.

I’m not sure why it triggered this philosophical tsunami in me, but it did. It’s not like I find the question of how anyone got where they are today offensive. I mean, I get it. Humans like order because without order there is chaos. And that order almost mandates we categorize people and places and things. George Washington was our first President. Paris is in France. My keys are on the usual spot on the counter. We like things to fit.

But there is a sense of hierarchy inherent in questions like, “How did you get where you are today?” We ask people who we think are rich or powerful or somehow elevated in our eyes that question, as if whatever their answer is will somehow magically transform our life if we do whatever they did. We want to know and hopefully emulate the secret of their success. We buy self-help books with that theme all the time.

You’d never ask someone sleeping under a pile of dirty clothes on a slab of filthy cardboard over a heating grate “How did you get where you are today?” because we don’t care about the answer. Or more likely, it’s not entertaining enough, it’s nothing we’d want to copy, it’s not an answer that’ll make us smile.

I actually did that a couple times, though. One time in Pittsburgh, an affable homeless guy walked up to me and asked if I had some money to spare. So I did something some may think is exploitive: I told him I’d give him five bucks if he’d sit down with me and tell me about his life, which was my way of asking “How did you get where you are today?”

He said something vague, maybe his life took a bad turn, I can’t remember the details. I don’t think he was offended, but his affability waned as he hemmed and hawed trying to find an answer. But his smile returned when I gave him the fiver, shook his hand and wished him well.

Another time in Seattle, a homeless man approached me outside my hotel and said he was sleeping under a bridge somewhere, and could use a few bucks. I asked politely what brought him to this, and he spoke either the truth or a lie or maybe a delicate blend of both when he said “I’m a veteran…I’d rather not talk about it.”

So I gave him a few bucks. He thanked me and went on his way, and I on mine.

“How did you get where you are today?” is one of those somewhat rhetorical questions I think that could be up there with “How are you?” as far as it being useful. When someone asks that question, it’s perfunctory. The person asking doesn’t require a long-winded answer about how you are and the person answering isn’t required to give one. But often they do, and the asker then spends the next moments looking over the askee’s shoulder to be rescued by recognizing someone else they suddenly need to talk to or spotting a shrimp at the raw bar with their name on it.

Another rather empty question, often asked at a party, totally open ended given the range of possibilities: “So, what do you do?” is an obvious intention is to find out what people do when they get up every day to earn money to pay for the place they woke up in, the car they drive to and from it, the food they put in their belly.

My cocky answer to “What do you do?” is often “About what?” or “Now? I’m talking to you.” My unspoken answer is “Well, it’s a long story,” unspoken because virtually no one asking that wants to waste a lot of time listening to what would likely be a lengthy answer when they could be attacking the shrimp at the raw bar.

So I’ll play along and say, “I’m an actor,” and they’ll be intrigued, raise both eyebrows and ask, “Oh, that’s cool! Have I seen you in anything?” My short answer is always “Probably not,” because if I dive into a longer one, they’ll quickly look over my shoulder hoping to find someone with a much shorter one.

I guess the bottom line of this ramble is this: where you are today matters.

To you. But to others, it’s usually just a polite way of making conversation, perhaps feigning interest in the answer, and moving on to the next social obligation hoping for something more entertaining. And that’s fine. It makes our world go around in an orderly fashion.

But be advised: should you see me at a party and ask “How did you get to where you are today?” I just may say, “A Honda Civic. Thanks for asking.” And then head for the raw bar for that shrimp with my name on it.