Every time I write a piece advocating escape from corporate servitude, I receive a few emails that contain a particular kind of scolding. They tell me that only an entitled brat could be unsatisfied with a stable job and a roof, in a world where so many pine for only these things.
According to my critics, even if you find your standard weekday boring, painful or unfulfilling, you ought to embrace it, simply because a third-world coal miner would kill for your benefits package. When so many have so little, attempting to escape a situation in which you can reliably feed yourself and fund a retirement could only be an act of the utmost ingratitude.
If you’re reading this, it’s nearly certain that you’re living with levels of potential freedom that nearly all of history’s humans would envy, and that alone is reason enough to feel uneasy if you haven’t yet made good on this gift.
No, it is not a symptom of greed, this desire to escape corporate policy, consumer debt, meaningless work, or any other life-draining first-world cultural norm. Rather, it’s a reaction to a truth we don’t like to talk about in the office: that, given our options, we are probably not using our lives very well.
The truth is most of us, simply by following the path prescribed by our schools, our bosses and our peers, end up entrenched in a set of roles that do not serve our deepest values and which, in the early hours of any given Monday, we do not look especially forward to fulfilling.
As our impoverished coal miner knows, only a fool would submit to living a single day as a peon when he has the means to escape in his back pocket. Limiting your freedom in some kind of token solidarity with the truly oppressed is like avoiding exceptional health simply because the chronically ill could never have such a thing.
I’m convinced now that a calculated escape from the status quo is an aspiration to a particular kind of health, which is only now beginning to catch on: a thoughtful, prosperous alignment of your values and your lifestyle.
You might think that in a world where such a thing is possible, we’d all be trying on lifestyles until we found one that fit. But relatively few do. As it stands, the norm is to pick a popular one, perhaps fully aware that The Man himself is at the helm, and run with it for several decades, even well after its ultimate irrelevance and emptiness begin to show. Meanwhile, we complain fondly about it, make knowing jokes with our colleagues about it, steal pens and toner to reclaim some of our lost self-esteem, and if we’re lucky, become at least numb to the work itself. What makes it seem worthwhile is that the proceeds allow us to build, in our evenings and on our weekends, a fraction of the life we wanted all along.
DAMNNNNNN.
http://www.raptitude.com/2014/12/working-for-the-man-should-be-a-last-resort/