I often find myself sitting at my desk, staring in disbelief at the work I am performing, and wondering just how and why I ended up here. Furthermore, I don’t understand why I work so particularly hard at it. Why am I wasting my time working all the time? For that matter, why am I in this city? What particular good is all this crap doing me?
The answer is shockingly simple. I have to come to work day in and day out to make paper. Paper to keep the house payments up to date, paper to keep the lights on, and hopefully enough paper to buy a sufficient number of distractions to keep you, if not happy then numb. If you can’t do that then there are numerous prescription drugs that can numb you to reality, just ask your doctor.
People always say that you should find something you want to do, and that will make it all better. But do you know a single person who truly does what they want to do for a living? What person all full of sunshine and daisies comes home from work and says, “What a great day! I love my job! I can’t wait to go back tomorrow!” Just for clarification, people who hate their family and use their job as an escape don’t count.
Even if you find a job that is interesting in the short run, soon enough you’ll be doing the same thing over and over and over and over, and it’s back to feeling like work again. The same old, same old drab nothingness of a gray dawn. Just 25 more years until you can retire, if you’re lucky.
I guess that’s one reason why some people are religious. They’re so fed up with real life that they create a new, “eternal” life that will somehow be everything that the one they have is not. Others drown in their booze. Some run marathons. A few power through it all with hopeless optimism. Any way you slice it, they all show deep discontent with the way things work, the way things are.
In the end we will all end up just as industrialized generations past. The cycle repeats over and over, crushing the souls of billions each time around. You can’t fight it. Even if you wanted to you wouldn’t know who to hit. And so you’ll sit in your office, or cubicle, and when it cuts you to the core, never fear. Your paycheck will be waiting to salve your pain.
