Convenient Ways to Kill Yourself – Two
October 2nd, 2011Burn out; fade away.
If that doesn’t work for you, there’s always the opposite. I’m old enough to see the dangers of the folks who choose to grow up too much. There’s always the chance they get lost in it and become this thing they didn’t want. Wearing the biz-casual khakipants or necktie every day can just wear a person down to the point of being a homogenous office jockey. They start to think the career is everything. They fail at being social outside of work; they get the marriage and 2.5 children, and they fade away.
Soon enough the needs of the job, career advancement, shaping their lives into what we all imagine “grown ups” have to do – this is what consumes them. Long hours, higher salary, climbing the ladder is all they know how to do anymore. Life is one project after another, and it kills them. The stress eats away at them every day. Make more money, buy a bigger house, make more money, get a bigger TV, have another kid, work harder and harder and harder to make more money to pay for all the things you think you need. It’s suicide.
The modern office environment is enough to kill anyone. Either it kills a person’s spirit, making them the khaki cog they need to be in order to succeed – or it kills their sanity living through the same day again and again until they break down and hurt themselves or others. Add to that the stress of deadlines and the cutthroat political atmosphere and you need a vice or two just to make it through. No matter what you do, heart disease creeps up on you.
The worst part of it all is how they pretend to be happy. They will tell you everything is going great, the second baby is on the way, the promotion just went through – as if any of that is really happiness. It’s all a series of banal particulars that when said with a smile encourages people to say “congratulations.” What they’re really saying is “Help me, I’m digging myself further in and I don’t know how to get out.” If you really press them into opening up their smile-shell, that’s when they tell you just how disappointing it all is. But they’ve bought the dream and no amount of common sense can wake them up. I hear it’s not so bad to die in your sleep.
