Article

Culture

Purpose

Work

8 August 2025

4 min read

The secret to finding your perfect job is to ignore the influencers

There’s too much vocational shame on LinkedIn

Thomas Sharpe

Thomas is a writer exploring the intersection of faith, politics, and social justice.

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“If you’re looking for a job, here’s something that I think will change your life”.

This is not the first time my social media has targeted me with an advert selling a better job, a higher paying role, a more fulfilling career, a more purposeful company. This is a new iteration of a long train of ‘Cinderella’ job advertisements I’ve received, promising that I will find the slipper if I just give away a bit more of my contentment and attention. If you’ve clicked on this article, I imagine you might be in the same boat.

The hustle influencers tell me that I could find a job with higher earnings and greater financial freedom. They say that I should be an entrepreneur, that working in a standard job is like existing as a subordinate in a dystopian novel. They ask me, “Why are you not a millionaire yet?” They can teach me if I just sign up to their free course.

The effective altruism influencers tell me that I need to find a job with purpose. I must change the world with every minute of my working day, or my work at best, isn’t worth doing, and, at worst, is actively harmful. I need to be an effective altruist, not just with my money, but with my vocation. They can teach me if I just attend their conference.

I’m sure there is plenty of good in both of these camps.

Entrepreneurship takes our creative human instincts and crafts them into endeavours that can drive economies, create jobs, and aid human flourishing. It releases actual potential in ways that 9-5 roles are often unable to do.

Purposeful work enables us to spend our 80,000 hours at work solving problems that matter. It can ignite our passion for work and facilitate the best minds focusing on the most complex issues.

However, as these career marketers point young people towards the professional promised land, they inadvertently create a malaise of discontent at work. Out of this, I frequently find myself questioning whether I’m doing the right job. When people ask me about my work, I’ll respond hesitantly, unable to hide this small sense of vocational shame I carry. I actually quite like my job. But no, I’m not an entrepreneur. And no, I haven’t found the most purposeful work I could find.

Every so often, this discontentment reaches boiling point, and I spend hours scrolling through LinkedIn, researching Masters, or thinking about small businesses I could start. Unsurprisingly, this compounds the discontentment as the Cinderella job I’m looking for remains tantalisingly elusive.

Social media has exacerbated this problem. Influencers trade on attention, and young people’s professional discontentment generates plenty of that commodity to trade in. Worse than that, it’s a market with easily generatable new leads – I’ve found that all it takes are a few 30-second videos about “the career you wish you had”. Surely this is part of the reason why “91% of millennials say they expect to change jobs every three years, and the average tenure for workers between the ages of 25 and 34 is 2.8 years”, according to Zippia, a careers site.

I sometimes need reminding that I just need to look; to look at the friendships I have with my colleagues; to look at the interesting problems I get to work on.

This discontentment is not a new feeling, and I’ve appreciated the following parable from the Jesuit priest Anthony De Mello as I’ve wrestled with discontentment about work. It’s called "The Little Fish."

"Excuse me," said an ocean fish. "You are older than I, so can you tell me where to find this thing they call the ocean?"

"The ocean," said the older fish, "is the thing you are in now."

"Oh, this? But this is water. What I'm seeking is the ocean," said the disappointed fish as he swam away to search elsewhere.

"Stop searching, little fish," says De Mello. “There isn't anything to look for. All you have to do is look."

Like the ocean fish, I sometimes need reminding that I just need to look; to look at the friendships I have with my colleagues; to look at the interesting problems I get to work on; to look at the privilege of having a job in the first place; to look at the beauty in the small things, like a good cup of tea to start the work day.

There are certainly times when searching for a career change is the right thing, but De Mello reminds me that in always searching for the next thing, I could easily miss ocean of opportunities right in front of me.

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Review

Awe and wonder

Culture

Theatre

22 April 2025

5 min read

This Narnia play left me yearning to cheer on good

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is still relevant at 75.

Steve Dew-Jones

Steve is news director of Article 18, a human rights organisation documenting Christian persecution in Iran.

A play set shows a witch and lion on stage.

EMG Entertainment.

This article contains spoilers.

It’s been 75 years since C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was first published, and the story is still captivating audiences and even sparking fresh controversy.

If you hadn’t heard the news, the role of the lion, Aslan, is rumoured to have been offered to Meryl Streep, a woman, for Greta Gerwig’s upcoming film, set to be released in time for Thanksgiving next year.

I recently saw another adaption of the famous book - Adam Peck’s play - in a theatre in Torquay, as part of a 75th anniversary tour of the UK.

And having previously read the book and watched two different film versions, I still found myself considering elements of the story I hadn’t previously, hidden depths I hadn’t noticed - even if these didn’t include Aslan’s gender.

For those not familiar with the tale, it follows the journey of four children through the doors of a magic wardrobe, which transports them into a fantastical kingdom in which a lion reigns but a witch has held dominion for 100 years.

Under the White Witch’s spell, there has been only winter for a century - “always winter and never Christmas”, as one famous line from the story goes.

But now, thrust into this story in the fulfilment of a prophecy long foretold, four “sons of Adam and daughters of Eve” - boys and girls, to you and me - come as the lion king returns, and a new day dawns.

The winter begins to thaw, Spring is in the air, and Father Christmas even shows up to shower the children with gifts.

But the return of Aslan - and even Santa Claus - doesn’t signal the end of the story. There is still a battle to be fought; the witch still has power and even ensnares one of the children, Edmund, with the promise of all the Turkish delight he could wish for, and the title of a prince.

It is at this moment - still early in the tale - that the battle between good and evil is clearly laid out, and the forces of light and darkness clash thenceforth.

In the play, those enslaved by the witch are clad in black to emphasise the distinction, while much is made of the meaning of the name of the youngest child, Lucy: “bringer of light”.

The imagery is abundantly clear, as it has ever been in Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, of which the The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is the first and most famous of seven books.

And the author, renowned for being an atheist who later became a Christian, leans heavily upon his newfound faith throughout the Narnian tales, and not least in the character of Aslan.

Yet while you and I may frustratingly regularly let ourselves down, there is also something within us - is there not? - that ever yearns to cheer on the forces of good.

At Easter, it is especially hard not to see in Aslan’s death and resurrection a striking similarity with the figure at the centre of the Christian faith.

Indeed, it was this moment of greatest sacrifice - for the “traitor”, Edmund - that most struck me this time around, even though I already knew the story so well.

At church the following day, as I took Communion, I was still reflecting on Aslan’s sacrifice and wondering whether Edmund more closely resembles the average Christian - myself included - than the older, nobler brother, Peter, in whom most of us would prefer to see our likeness.

My mind returned to a moment in the theatre that had humbled me, when the lady sitting in front of us handed me £20 to treat my children for being “so good”, having at the interval made me bristle by asking them to sit quietly and stop kicking her chair.

“Fair enough?” I hear you suggest. Well, perhaps, but I didn’t think it until that humbling moment after the curtain had closed.

My son later told me he hadn’t thought the lady had been unkind, which again got me thinking about my own imperfections and need to be more childlike.

Yet while you and I may frustratingly regularly let ourselves down, there is also something within us - is there not? - that ever yearns to cheer on the forces of good.

I doubt many audience members were rooting for the witch, while I suspect most can also understand the need to “beware the witch”, as one song from the play puts it

Another biblical parallel is the fulfilment of a prophecy long foretold, while both the Bible and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe highlight the special significance of someone innocent dying to save the guilty.

There is even a clear reference at the very start of the book and play to one of Lewis’ most famous pieces of theology, when the professor in whose wardrobe the children later get lost asks them a question as they consider whether or not to believe Lucy about the magical kingdom that she first glimpsed.

She’s either lying, mad or telling the truth, the professor says, in much the same way that Lewis says of Jesus Christ’s own central claim: he’s either “mad, bad or God”.

As for the success of the play, as someone who no longer lives in London, I was certainly impressed by this West End product.

The scene changes are creative, aided by music, dance and possibly even a trapdoor - my children and I had different opinions on how the magical disappearances of certain characters were achieved. Maybe it truly was magic.

There’s also the nice touch of the play starting even before it officially begins, through the twinkling of a soldier’s fingers upon the keys of a piano while the audience take their seats - perhaps to help us turn our minds from a sunny day in the English Riviera to dreary London at the time of the Blitz.

So, do go and see the play if you get the opportunity - it’ll do you good and make you think, whether or not you choose to consider if the lion is male or female.