I’m so tempted to start this post with an obnoxious expletive — if only because I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard the above expression used as a substitute for life — but I’ll refrain for now.
Trust me, though, no one I’ve met is living the dream.
And yet we endure; the moral imperative keeps us fastened to a moribund existence, where we spin the plates but never come alive to who we truly are.
Sure, there are lots of methodologies to escape the tyranny of work but mostly they’re premised on going it alone — i.e. the startup of one.
Tip: before you loosen your grip on your shitty job, go read Michael E. Gerber’s excellent book “Awakening the Entrepreneur Within”. If you do, you might decide that your idea for a business isn’t that great and no amount of willpower, grit or fortitude is going to make that sucker fly.
But where does that leave you? As likely, on the horns of a dilemma. You either try to make the most of your extant situation or you leap and hope the net big enough to hold everything your cleave to as part of a purposeful life.
But is there a middle way?
There might be but it means looking at our existing structures and asking ourselves if a more collaborative way of working, inside and outwith the organisation, might be the way forward.
Some call it a virtual world, but to my mind if you want to design a life on your terms, isn’t it better to work with like-minded people, who share a common purpose (e.g. lets get on top of this environmental catastrophe) than it is to thrash around not knowing how to make sense of things?
Even if this doesn’t float your boat, isn’t it about time we all started questioning the status quo beyond the stereotypical pay and conditions story? I mean, what’s so wrong with trying to pin down the owners or the board on why their ‘Why’ isn’t focused exclusively (or at all!) or rectifying the problems of the world?
I know, I know, you’re scared witless that you might lose your less-than-perfect job but then again, perhaps it’s time you took a long hard look in the mirror and asked yourself if the world you’re creating, wrought in the image of you and your company, is something you’ll be happy to leave to your kids to sort out — assuming there’s a habitable planet left for them to live off.
Photo by Michael Paredes on Unsplash