You Are Not Your Job

Unless you want to be.

I have never done this in my life. (Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash)

In days of olde, there was no such thing as “work.” There was only “survival.”

And then God said, “I shall make unto you a job, and it shall sucketh. And you shall question the purpose of your existence every day, around 3:00-ish, and cry out unto me, ‘Oh my God, why am I the only person who ever fills the coffee machine?’. And I shall not answer, for I never listen to my voicemails.”

You used to be just another Homo erectus like every other Homo erectus trying not to get eaten by a dinosaur. You got up in the morning, had a nice little forage, maybe a nap, foraged some more. And then you went to bed, always sleeping with one eye open in case Trogg from two caves down got any ideas.

You repeated this cycle for a few years. And then by the age of sixteen or so, you called it a day and died.

Things haven’t really changed that much. Your stress level is still equivalent to being chased by a saber-toothed tiger, but now the saber-toothed tiger sends incessant emails and calls work meetings at 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday.

You still forage — it’s called “snacking” now — and you go to bed every night just to get up in the morning and repeat the same cycle all over again until you die.