Friday, July 11, 2008

9 to 5 lives...

One of these days, I was listening to my Boss talk about what is considered to be the parameter of success in present times , and as could be expected of a person who has worked for over 10 years in corporate, he believes that standards have risen to unattainable heights, and like every concerned and demanding(more often than not, demand is the only concern) citizen, he also blames the society (the ultimate culprit which no one ever cared to affiliate to a traceable, describable entity) to be responsible for this . According to him, a person is judged by the position he has in his company, and the no. of zeroes in his paycheck. True to much extent, and what left me thinking was not this times-have-changed cliché, which people of the better generation use to amuse themselves thinking that they had the easy way out of life, and things have only gotten worse. (I must make clear that my Boss does not belong to the glorious past; he is very much a contemporary). But I could not somehow agree when he says that an individual cannot follow his real vocation as not having a fixed, 9 to 5 job is considered to be the calling card of a failure. Why so, and why not. We usually get enough time to follow our whims, live recklessly, do nothing, achieve nothing….. and then when we decide to come back home, we are welcome. A 9 to 5 job is more choice than compulsion, a choice we make together with another millions who fall in same social status as ours, the same income group, who take the same 7.30 bus as we do, who have the same challenges in front of them, finishing tasks, meeting deadlines, making presentations, coordinating and mis-coordinating things…… and cribbing that the work just doesn’t seem to get over.

Why blame the villain society when it travels in the same bus as ours.

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