I just finished reading a book about an office Christmas party and how that one night changed the lives of a lot of people. It was a kind of story that could easily be made into a chick flick, something that I would love to watch with my girl friends. But the feeling that I was left with at the end of the book was something totally different. The story revolved around different people in a big oil company, and the families of those people, how the wives of big corporate tycoons were left alone in their marriage because their husbands were too busy climbing up the big corporate ladder, even if a man could see that his marriage was falling apart, his job came first. Though this mostly surrounded married men in their 50s and 60s, I couldn’t deny the fact that most of our generation is heading towards a life like that, where our jobs come before everything else.
I have been in the job industry for around 1.5 years. I have a lot of friends around, we have fun, we party. Even the people in my office are very fun loving and I hang out with them as well. All my weekends are spent lazing around at home, doing nothing at all. But I won’t deny that I am constantly worried about work. I am never at peace even during the weekend, while I am on a trip, even when I am visiting my parents. Every Friday I leave office at a decent time, promising myself that I will finish the pending work over the weekend. There is no deadline that my manager has given me, there is absolutely no rush, but I have burdened myself with all this pressure that when I am not doing anything related to work, or working on the skills that are required for work, I start feeling guilty. If someone asks me to go out during the day on Saturday, my first feeling is that I have a lot of work. But there is no justification of what work I have or how that is even important.
This is my state when I am just starting my career, with no responsibilities. I think that with this kind of mentality at this stage, I am just preparing myself for a future where I might put everything behind my job, and I couldn’t be more wrong. We always end up blaming our companies that we are burdened with so much work that there is no scope for a work life balance, but in this world with this cut throat competition, is there ever a chance? With so many aims and aspirations of excelling at everything that we do, and the hardwork that needs to reach that stage in life, can we ever find peace? Are we heading towards a future where we have no life?
quenchingthelongthirst 