death of a salesman
the jungle is dark and full of diamonds 💎
While my mother would insist I was born to be one, a salesman is not the stuff of childhood dreams fulfilled. Whatever my ego and creative side may try to sell me to appease my self worth, if you were to look at my resume, you’d find years and years and years… of sales experience. Thus, making me, (gulp) a salesman.
This life is not for the faint of heart. A Salesman is a man way out in the blue. Untethered to land, on an island all alone with the goods he peddles. Riding the rollercoaster of fleeting highs and deep valley lows.
When you are up, you are up. On the pedestal, spraying the champagne. Disconnecting from your aeron chair light as a feather, descending upon the masses as a god amongst men.
But what happens when the charm wears off, and your beard starts to turn a deeper shade of white, and all of the smiling and nodding faces disappear?
What then? Is sales something you can be born to do? Is there any other option for those with the smile and dial proclivity?
If reinvention is a reality, I wonder. I will posit from the trenches, in low altitudes, building rapport and discussing the weather in far off distances, with bobbing heads never to be seen again.
I am left considering my life and all of my choices after a re-read of the AP LIT staple, 1947’s Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. Self exploration is a funny thing. It leads you almost twenty years into the past wondering why you didn’t heed Millers’ warning from all the way back in the black and white times. It was all there, laid out in crystal clear — a life of extreme euphoric like highs, and deep, crater-like lows. Where rejection is everyday and the highs never last, tracking quickly to the inevitable.
But it is all good. I have chosen to trudge deeper into the jungle. Boots in the muck, where I will live amongst the animals and die smiling in the wet grass. We salesmen are tragic figures with a flair for the dramatic.
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.
Recently read:
Cold Spring Harbor by Richard Yates
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux
All of these are wonderful and worth checking out. I hope you are enjoying the start of summer. Peace and love to you all.