What motivates one for a corporate job? I asked myself introspecting my years passed in the engineering college. Lucrative job, attractive salary, luxurious life and the respect in the society and among the peers are some to count. Perhaps these are the parameters deemed to lead a happy life. But the question is if happiness is mere a function of these factors. Let’s analyze the degree of veracity it holds.
One works hard to get admission in the elite college. one works even harder to get creditable grades in the college. This is not enough. One has to struggle hard to obtain a job. Provided one is fortunate enough and does not fall through getting a commendable job, his arduous journey to the corporate illusion starts here. One ventures a journey that lures one to have a palate of most tantalizing and swanky life that later presents itself as an ostentatious one that lacks the most essential part of happiness, which is mental peace. The more one is subjected to peer’s expectations and ambitiousness the more one alienates to oneself. One also tears the social ties and immures oneself in the bars of solitude. One may pave success along the way one advances but the contentment is still quest for.
What accounts to such an arid life that makes one reluctant to find reason for self existence? The obsession to fat paychecks, exacting fidelity to corporate microcosm, and self commitment are some factors that dominate one and render one inanimate to look for other facets of life. I am surely not attacking philosophy of work (the so called “work is worship”) but condemning the corporate sticklers or ergo maniacs, who possess too much obsession to accolades that tempt them to stick to the fabrics of corporate world to such an extent that drives them to jadedness. Vexation emanates from this foolhardy obsession to work, which shuns one of the other dimensions of life.
Work is important but not to a cloying degree. Life has an aesthetic value and this should be given its due significance. World is not mere a place to peregrinate but to be explored of its beauty. This will make living worth and will instill a sense of contentment. This is the only key to escape the illusion of corporate life that promises fake glory.