The Corporate Slave

In the name of getting better and growing in career, I feel I am growing into a slave – The Corporate Slave. I have completely forgot my existence, my life starts and ends at office or office work. Recently I travelled to my hometown and I noticed, although I was physically there, the slave attitude in me prompted me to keep thinking of the office and work. I was there for a very special family occasion and this was a very short vacation after 2 long years of exile. I wanted to enjoy every bit of the time but there was hardly a day when I did not pull out my office laptops or called some of my colleagues finding out the status of projects etc. Was this necessary??? Absolutely NO – then why did I do this? I did that because I have developed a syndrome and unnamed syndrome, that makes me think and feel that I cannot exist without the project and the office laptop and conference calls. That has become so much a part of me that I feel incomplete without that.

I pull out my laptop from my bag during a vacation with so much pride and glory and am so happy to get out of a family gathering or friends chit chat saying I have an important call to take. It is as if the whole world is going to collapse if I do not take that call. During my appraisal meeting, when my manager says, you have done “xxx” … you will have to put in more effort this year. I proudly say, you will never find me taking vacations and I work for 12, 13, 14 …. Hours a day. I don’t care if it’s a weekend, you will always find me dedicated to the work. I forget that I took a job to earn and have a good life. I am earning but to be a slave and not a good life. There are 1000s of duties and responsibilities that I have to discharge towards my parents, family, spouse, child, friends, society – I shy away from all that and still feel I am doing the right thing.

When I know for sure that this is wrong and this is not what I should be doing, this is not what I am born to do, why am I not able to get out of it? What is it that is holding me break these chains of slavery? Why is it that I sign a contract to work for 8 hours a day, I end up devoting my life. I started working to have a better life but where is “LIFE”? I left my back my LIFE and have become a Corporate Slave and what do I get in return? A promise, from the corporations that ONE DAY you can achieve the dreams we have shown you and the reality is that ONE DAY might never come. I am chasing an uncertainty at the cost of losing the certainty. I take out 5 minutes of my time in between my office and home office, for my kid and I get so much love and affection in those 5 minutes. I give him a hug while hurriedly pulling out my phone to check for a new email and in return he gives back 10 kisses and his undivided attention and affection. But I choose my emails and phone calls –WHY?

I hope one day, my heart will win over my brain and I will be able to truly able to differentiate between happiness and perceived happiness. I truly hope, one day I will break this slavery and will be a free man. A man with a life of his own, a man who wakes up to love and be loved, a man who has time for his loved ones, a man who works to live and not a man who lives to work.