Wednesday, June 14, 2006

On Working Life

[Note: Since it's silly season (i.e. there's nothing insanely ludicrous happening at work), I've pulled this particularly depressing piece out of archive. It's something I wrote after deciding to leave a sabbatical I had hoped would change my life. It did, actually -- by bringing me on this horrific journey through corporate purgatory. Kind of like an optimism amputation. You can barely tell now, but I limp when I hope for anything too good.]

Yesterday, I woke up and discovered I was in the real world. You know, the one where it takes money to make money. The one where instant fame isn’t guaranteed just because I got a degree from a reasonably old and famous university in the heart of England. The one where I’m just one of a few billion people on this earth, and the odds of my doing anything particularly extraordinary are just about as big as my personal proportional representation of humankind. Yes, yesterday was the day I decided that I should go back to work in the corporate world.

That must have also been the day that I officially became old. Youth affords the idealistic, “I Can Do Anything” dreams, as well as the laughably wasted energy that goes into pursuing those dreams. Not that I’ve abandoned the megalomaniacal dreams, mind you. They’re just tucked away until I can fund them somewhat properly, without having to starve and suffer and calculate to the last penny how much it will take to replace a pair of threadbare socks.

Is it so wrong to be just another Joe? Aside from all the shame that flows out of my pores as a result of being raised to be a President of the United States, what exactly is wrong with following a well-trodden path – for just a few years? Perhaps it is the fact that I am walking in such a measured manner back to the black hole from which I escaped almost exactly one year ago. It is the voluntary admission of failure, for now, to display any modicum of prodigy. Besides which, a fear of complacency – the silent, pervasive plague of the middle classes – mutters in my head that I’ll never again escape. And I won’t even know it when Mediocrity has finally consumed my soul.

Life will just spit me out, a small pile of desiccated gray bones, at the end of my days. I’ll only retain faint memories of kicking and screaming, and attribute them to the bad Chateau Lafite ’70.

Hook me up to my yoke; I’m ready to start plowing until I die.

2 Comments:

Blogger David said...

Oh - my - spud. Are you trying to personally torment me? I don't even know where to begin...

Ok. For starters, I tried and failed to get into that reasonably old and famous university. You could have had the decency to call and give up your place for me. Much as I hate to admit it, the opportunities afforded there are still greater than at any other institution in this land (and I could have whiled away my time playing Quake with your hubby).

What next...oh yes. "Is it so wrong to be just another Joe?" Of course not, if you are Joe. But Joe hasn't exactly had the advantages you and me have been handed by our parents. Joe probably doesn't get 50% of your score on an IQ test. Joe's mum and dad didn't pay for his education all the way through, and they certainly didn't instil in him any self-belief or ambition.

If we’d received the average upbringing we could aspire to being average. And there are people out there with distinctly under-average upbringings, who are told by their parents every hour on the hour how **** they are. To them, getting anywhere near average would be scaling a mountain. For us, placed on the mountaintop by the economic advantages won by our parents, it’s nauseating to slide down into mediocrity.

Phew! Hang on, I’m just having a sip of coffee.

Do you honestly believe that anyone "successful" has more brains or ability than you? Pick one. Bill Gates? Michael Dell? Oprah Winfrey? They’re just people who decided to get off their arses and put their lesser-talents-than-many to use.

It’s all about what you do. Alexander the Great was 32 when he died, having conquered everywhere. Jesus Christ was saviour of the world by 33 (I’m still three years shy of that one). Neither of them, as far as I’m aware, attended university in England. At the other end of the scale, J. Southerton made his debut for England at cricket when aged 49, so it’s never too late.

What was I saying? Anyway, the biggest problem is that you’re in a system that wants to keep you down. There’s only a finite amount of cash to go around, so billionaires don’t want you to join their club. Do your managers want you to excel at work just so you can leap-frog them in the promotion stakes? The aristocracy (both sides of the Atlantic) only marry each other, safeguarding the wealth for as few families as possible. Doesn’t all that make you just a teensy bit angry?

Now, we both know that you don’t really believe what you post here. At least you still admit to megalomaniac tendencies, and I know how much you’d enjoy being the richest potato on earth. So stop your whinging, because if I had your life I would thank the Lord/my stars/fate every minute for how lucky I was or, if I was unhappy, I’d use my incredible advantages to launch myself as high as I wanted to go. Just let me know when you want to do that job swap.

Now I'm off to do the washing up.

2:22 AM  
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