curiousgirl's playground

...We take a job... and we dream of what might have been. And then we scheme ways to make the career we've found more fulfilling, more rewarding. Ambition colors our lives --- an all-consuming, fundamental ambition to somehow reach a better slot. This ambition is a universal disease. Politicians dream of becoming president, priests of being named pope, apparatchiks of becoming commissar, commoners of being crowned king.

..It's just that when one speaks of work, it always comes back to dream versus reality, to envy and ambition. But most of all, it comes back to self.

This is understandable, but also deadly. Too often we are so busy contemplating our splendid selves, congratulating ourselves over some minor, meaningless victory ("The Boss remembered my name! My future is made.") or chastising ourselves over some inexplicable defeat ("The Boss forgot my name! I'm human trash. I think I'll kill myself.") that we fail to look around. More often than not, that is where our real problem lies.

The Job. The Company you work for. We shed a tear over Dickens' horrific workhouses, then fail to notice that our own company makes Scrooge & Marley seem like Club Med; or that, next to our boss, Fagin is Mother Teresa.

...But when you return to the corporate cave tomorrow morning, do not tell your workmates what you've learned. Don't turn to the person at the next desk and loudly announce, "You know, this place really sucks." Such philosophical honesty may result in your living in a damp cardboard box under the San Fernando Street overpass and wearing somebody else's underwear. Just keep your mouth shut and remember: Given the present state of Social Security, you can never, ever retire...