What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a sense of entrapment in one's specialized skills, suggesting that overqualification can lead to a lack of opportunities.
In this quote, Margaret Atwood explores the idea that becoming too specialized or overqualified in a certain field can result in a confinement to that area, making it difficult to pursue other avenues or jobs. The speaker expresses a feeling of hopelessness and entrapment, suggesting that they are destined to remain in a role that, while perhaps intellectually engaging, ultimately limits their potential and freedom. This highlights the paradox of expertise: while one may gain a deep knowledge in a field, it may also restrict their ability to navigate wider opportunities in life.
In practice
In a speech about the challenges of job specialization, this quote can emphasize the importance of adaptability.
If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.
I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
We love each other, that’s true whatever it means, but we aren’t good at it; for some it’s a talent, for others only an addiction.
I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.
Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.
This is the middle of my life, I think of it as a place, like the middle of a river, the middle of a bridge, halfway across, halfway over. I'm supposed to have accumulated things by now: possessions, responsibilities, achievements, experience and wisdom. I'm supposed to be a person of substance.
We must judge of a form of government by it's general tendency, not by happy accidents
People unfit for freedom - who cannot do much with it - are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a "have" type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a "have not" type of self.
We aren't upset when Paramount makes a $200 million movie that flops, but if a charity experiments with a $5 million fundraising event that fails, we call in the attorneys. So charities are petrified of trying bold new revenue-generating endeavors and can't develop the powerful learning curves the for-profit sector can.
By the time you read this, you'll be older than you remember.
There are men and women so lonely they believe God, too, is lonely.
Listening is an activity. It's not passive. We are creating the world by listening all the time.
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