Break.
Imagine yourself preparing hard for that coveted interview that you had always dreamt of. Imagine yourself sweating night and day, trying to gather every ounce of fact about the work you’re signing up for. Imagine yourself slaying that interview, gliding smoothly through the turmoil unbeknownst to you.
There you are, finally, sitting and working in one of the shiniest places you’ve ever known. Excited and happy to earn your first paycheck, you decide to put your heart into the job, only to find out later that you've been subsumed into an alternate reality. The reality that never existed for you, until today.
As a part of the big old shiny rut, you’re probably an analyst, an associate, a partner, or a consultant at best. Or alas! You might even have a fancier name on your card. Now imagine being stuck at home, working day and night, taking responsibilities and answering to a few men and women every other day. Through years and years of conditioning, you’re made to believe that life is finally on the right track. You start realising that the system is not so bad altogether and that everyone here is somehow doing the same thing — muting themselves only for the one paycheck that runs the entire family and patiently waiting for the one big jump they’ll get in their careers. You start believing in the vision that’s sold to you, solely because it’s probably the only vision that's ever shown to you.
And on one fine day, you realise you've been fooled through the fancy glass buildings and the huge numbers on the balance sheet. You realise that even after two hundred years of abandoning the barter system, humanity still transacts in fear and that labour is still as bad as it ever was despite bringing in a plethora of rules and laws. You realise that the very basic nature of our world is transactional and that everyone here is a test mule, trying to prove to themselves that they’re fit and they deserve to survive.
And for the ones who’d like to negate this worldview, I owe you a thank you. I owe you one because you don’t buy the toxicity that this glassy world sells. You don't buy the hunger to defeat your colleague or the hunger to be in someone’s good books. You, my friend, I assume, would buy the hunger to be your best self. You, my friend, I assume, would do it all, only for yourself.
To the people who read this, I’d like you to think about where you find yourself. If you’re someone like me, I see you standing at the crossroads of these two divergent views. Chances are, at times, you’d find yourself juggling between both the worldviews. You might be an XYZ at the office and you might be an ABC at home. In moments like these, I’d want you to recall this article, and consciously make efforts to stop the negatives in you. In moments like these, I’d want you to empathise with humanity, and for a minute, not look at it as a race to survive.
