Certainty Is An Illusion Capitalism Tries To Sell You
I left corporate life a decade ago.
I’ve worked at least two jobs continuously since I was 14 years old. In high school I was a bike messenger (after school) and a shoe salesman on weekends. I was an art director two months after graduating high school. In 25 years of corporate life, I was an executive on Wall St, in advertising, and in print media. I made a good salary, had strong benefits, and a respectable retirement package.
It took a cancer scare to walk away from 25 years of sunk costs.
When I left corporate life behind, friends thought I’d lost my goddamned mind, which, considering my already tenuous grip on sanity, is saying something. How was I going to survive? Did I have a plan for the future? What was I going to do for money? How could I cope with constant inconstancy?
I laughed in my head every time friends asked these questions.
If a quarter century working for someone else taught me anything, it was that I was unnecessary. No matter how high I ascended the ladder, there was no company that would not keep chugging along, making someone one else wealthy, if for any reason I didn’t show up the next day. Sure, the titles make you feel important, the six figure salary affords a limited amount of luxury, and I would not have been able to afford the surgeries which saved my life without adequate medical coverage.
But certainty? I knew that was an illusion.
I knew no matter how hard I worked and no matter how vital I felt to the success of any process, the instant a company could do better than me, I was gone. I knew I would never be paid what I was worth, that factors far beyond my meager realm of influence controlled not only whether I would have a job tomorrow, but whether the 401K I watched rise and fall with great agita would be worth what I was scrupulously attempting to save.
Most importantly I knew I could always make more money. You can’t make more life.
It took years to develop both the skills and the confidence to strike out on my own, knowing there was no safety net if I failed. While there have been many moments of abject terror, they have been worth the price of (relative) freedom. Instead of the illusion of sureness, I have faced crushing financial insecurity daily for the past decade. Friends who consider themselves risk averse would say I have a higher tolerance for uncertainty.
This may or may not be true. What is beyond debate is: whether or not you embrace uncertainty, it looms.
As hundreds of millions of people are suddenly forced to confront intractable realities around the fragility of health and wealth, I offer three words of little solace and much pragmatism:
Embrace your liberation.
Life has always been this fragile. The deceptions of surety, no matter how comforting, did not serve your interests. You have more resiliency than you’d have ever discovered under the guise of relative ease. Reject everything capitalism taught you to believe about your worth relative to your income.
The system needs you (plural) more than you (singular) ever needed the system.
