Thursday, November 19, 2015

The Pursuit of Happyness


Remember the movie with the same title? Will Smith starred as a struggling salesman of a portable bone-density scanner whose luck was down & out. His wife leaves him, he is kicked out of his own home & he has a five year old son who is dependent on him. The movie was downright sad except for the last five minutes when he gets called into a meeting with the senior management of the brokerage firm he is interning with. They call him to congratulate him on his excellent performance as an intern & they offer him a full time position with the firm.

My point is, Will Smith was genuinely in a bad place in his life, in the movie. He needed the money. He had to slog his ass off to make ends meet. What’s our excuse? By “our” I mean, my generation of work hardened overly ambitious position obsessed bunch. And I admit I’ve joined the bandwagon.

We are chasing the positions, the power, the big brands & the money. But are we happy? Are we chasing happiness? Or are we just turning into lifeless working machines that “society” has imposed on us as the “right” thing to do.

I feel helpless getting sucked into the system & to be honest I’m not sure what the alternative is. I love what each job brings my way – the feeling of being looked upon with respect, the wealth of knowledge that I acquire & the opportunity to interact with senior, respected people from my industry.

But am I happy? Are WE happy? I’m not so sure. We drool at exotic destinations from our sad workstations & promise ourselves that we will DEFINITELY make one of those trips by the end of the year, which never materializes of course. Year-ends are the worst time of year because we end up making those “Annual ROI” PPTs to the 10,000 clients we service. Everyone is fried & the only vacation we can think of is going to bed to take a 25-hour nap after horrendous work-days!

The rate at which we are propelling with a hardened drive to jump from one designation to the next till we dominate our respective chosen industries will become our downfall. I cringe to think of what we have turned ourselves into. Happiness, I will find you. WE will find you. In the meantime, please wait for us? Pretty, please? 

1 comment:

blaZinG_DraGoOnuS said...

Yup that elusive trip at the end of every year. I think sometimes we just need to be proactive at times and just do it! Ala the Shia LaBeouf video for inspiration :)