Barry Schwartz, in The Costs of Living, describes a former student, Allen, who has returned to campus for his tenth college reunion. Allen is a lawyer.

He came to my office looking healthy and prosperous. He was doing well at his (large, New York) law firm, and expected to make partner in another year or two. While he worked very hard, and didn't like all the clients he had to work for, his work was often interesting, and he knew that he was good at it. His wife, Nancy, enjoyed the same things, liked the same people, had fun together, and rarely argued. . . . They owned a nice, though small condo on Third Avenue in Manhattan, and a spot for their car in a garage just two blocks away. In the summer, they had a share in a rental in Southampton, a quarter mile from one of Long Island's more beautiful beaches.

It sounds like a good enough life, a man enjoying a success he deserves. But, it turns out, all is not well. Schwartz says, "there was a dullness in his eyes and a weariness in his voice. . . ." When Schwartz suggests that he must love his work, Allen makes clear that "love" is not the word he would use. Schwartz reports that Allen "wasn't sure that he was really doing anything especially worthwhile. Mostly he just helped rich people get richer or larger corporations get larger. He rarely felt, at the end of a day, that he had spent his time making the world a better place, and he had thought, when he started to law school, that he would sometimes get to do that."

Allen suffers from what might be called the "something more" syndrome, or what psychologists have referred to as the "working wounded."

Barry Schwartz, The Costs of Living: How Market Freedom Erodes the Best Things in Life 17, 18 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1994)

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