Chapter 15 - Paris: The End of a Career

Sead Seferovic

Apr 17, 20206 min read

Updated: Apr 18, 2020

In Paris, I met an old friend, living here in this eternal city and we went together to some excellent restaurants. I got to know the city of Paris well, as I walked along the streets for hours, thinking. The term is known as a flâneur, as coined by the French poet Baudelaire, who “flew high on the wings of madness”. A young man, strolling through the urban city, observing and experiencing the world around him and learning the harsh lessons of life. A bildungsroman, a coming of age.

I met a beautiful girl from Australia, here in Paris, the city of love. We spent the day together, as we walked slowly along the banks of the river Seine, and then suddenly we stopped, and looked in each others’ eyes. We were about to kiss. We both knew and felt that the moment had come. But there was something in the way. I was too nervous to make the first move. “You just slipped through my fingers, and I feel so ashamed. And no matter what I say, no matter what I do, I can’t change what happened”, the words of Daniel Cavanagh ring out, a sad song that remains, left behind on the banks of the Seine.

There was no Before Sunset, and the night took me over. I went out partying wildly, trying to destroy myself. But the world is too beautiful not to believe in the power of love, cleaning my soul.

I drifted for a year, down and out in Paris and London. Unemployment was hard to take. On the Paris streets, I thought about my career. I was a straight-A student, several times obtaining 100% marks in final exams. An excellent degree from a top London university. Academically, I had nothing to prove. But why did I go into law? It was a mistake, made when I was 18, and young. At the time I felt that this would somehow “make full use” of my ability, and a good career was what was respected in the structure of the society in which I lived. Most young people today think this way. But only a few know about the sacrifices that they must make for the digits in their bank accounts, before they sleepwalk into their careers and never return to themselves.

Money was a driving factor. I was born cynical because of my war-torn childhood and then became innocent, rather than the other way round. I thought that if all jobs take away all your time, then I might as well work for long hours and make as much money as possible. This logic was wrong, and I will freely admit, that it was naive.

Because from the very first moment, I did not enjoy studying law. It is not an anachronism to suggest that the law of the western world is most often about asserting relationships of power by exclusion and preserving private ownership of property. Adversarial individualism even found its expression in the human rights laws that did little to protect those most vulnerable and in need of help, and everywhere in law, fairness, justice and empathy are hard to find.

At university I wanted to change to literature or philosophy, but I was advised to “finish your degree”. And then while still at University, I was recruited for a job with one of the leading law firms, a top corporate law firm where elite students felt they had “made it”.

I eased off for two years, while the firm paid for my life. Nor do I regret this time, because it gave me the time and the freedom to cultivate my inner life and intellectual development, far from the law. Yet the trade-off came, for when it was time to enter the lion’s den of work in corporate London, I was not prepared.

During my two anxious, sleep-deprived years at this “leading firm”, I met some truly unpleasant people, of whom there is no need to talk about. But mostly, the people around me were just dull. And most of them are now gone from my life. And when the market crashed and my firm could not do deals, and when they understood that I was “unbusiness-like” and “unworldly”, not liking to “play the game”, they cast me adrift.

And here I was in Paris, by the banks of the river Seine, where I sat down and wept.

A long-lost journey through Thailand followed, where I travelled with an old friend hoping to re-establish our fading friendship. We travelled north to Chiang-Mai, and hiked up near to the Burmese border. We hiked through the dense jungle in the humidity and heat, though I was not ready, physically or emotionally, for the ardours of this journey. At the top of the mountain we slept on the floor in a hut of a local village, woken by roosters at 5am.

I travelled south, down to the islands, where the all-night full moon parties were. But here I found no liberation among the drunk western youngsters on gap years living their best party days. Mostly, I walked alone along the beach, brooding on my life.

At the end of our time in Thailand, I waded into a river under a beautiful waterfall, where I slipped on a stone and fell into the water while holding my camera, my entire stock of images lost as the camera submerged under water, leaving only vague memories of hopes and dreams.

After this I returned to the UK, and found a job as a lawyer at a small immigration and human rights firm. I wanted to do “something good with my life”, that was not about the lies of big business. I did not think any of my old friends and colleagues from their moneyed lives could understand such a move. Whatever they thought, they were right. I mainly lived in the Indian community, dealing with difficult responsibilities. I did not belong in this grubby world. I cared too much, wanting to help too badly, worrying about the competence and motivations of others. Every day I ended by taking my work home with me, worrying about every single possible negative outcome of every case I did, like it was a game of mental chess. I developed obsessive-compulsive tendencies and in the end, I had a breakdown and could not function.

I moved back home to my home-town in the South-West of the UK, to live with my mother and uncle. His rigid attitude towards me caused me a lot of pain.

It took a long time to recover. These were wasted years. But in the end, we all recover. Time is the great healer. And in the end, if you think you are adrift with no direction in life, you will find a direction. We all, somehow, find a way.

In the end I found a regular medical job in my home town. And my travelling resumed. I was fresh, ready, free, and stronger and wiser than I have ever been.

And I would hope to never judge anyone by the job function they must perform to place some money into their account, to survive in a dangerous world, where often, as Sartre wrote, “hell is other people”. Yet my early choice of career caused me untold suffering and with the course of time in a variety of more modest jobs, youngsters with inflated opinions of the value of their own professions, judging my personal choice of work continued to cause me pain.

Now I am a successful photographer I returned to Paris, before attending an exhibition in France. Walking the streets of Paris again after so many years, I revisited old memories. Once again I walked through William Blake’s “chart’r’d” streets, like the flâneur that I once was. I had never really changed.

A walk along the Seine that in 2010 was full of personal pain gained a completely new character. While passing under a bridge, I came across a man, lying down, with his hat covering his face, far away from the world. I was reminded of a beautiful but painful song, Under the Bridge by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Here are the lyrics:

Sometimes I feel

Like I don't have a partner

Sometimes I feel

Like my only friend

Is the city I live in

The city of angels

Lonely as I am

Together we cry

I don't ever want to feel

Like I did that day

Take me to the place I love

Take me all the way