One life — one love — don’t waste it
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Religions and corporations are both in the transformation business which aim to align your vision, values and mission to theirs. At a time when monotheistic religions all have their key transformation celebrations — Easter, Ramadan and Passover it is curious how companies use exactly the same belief altering techniques to promote exclusivity and commitment.
Some promote exclusivity and benefits and like AWS detail their values and expectations as part of the recruitment process others seek to align their people, products and processes with their business objectives and customer needs as part of the onboarding process.
Some of the more recent religions promise divine intervention in your material success provided you forswear your old sinful ways. It’s no surprise if you don’t spend your money on wine, women and song that you will become surprisingly wealthy — a simple application of the Micawber principle espoused by Charles Dickens.
The risk we run, should we choose to go down a corporate or religious rabbit hole is to become victims of Stockholm syndrome where we become victims rather than beneficiaries in a captive or abusive situation.
To avoid this you need to “take back control” and almost do a Brexit on your life — except managing your personal life is rather different than a delusional political slogan. You have one life, usually one love and it’s your responsibility not to waste it enslaved to a job or belief you are not totally committed to.
I had coffee recently with a friend who like me works for fun, we were talking of how some people look forward to “retirement” for 40 years of their working life — while avoiding risk or responsibility for all of those 40 years — only to be monumentally bored as they have never learned to really live. They are “Waiting for Godot”, who as you know never shows.
I have reached an age when colleagues tend to start a conversation with “When will you retire?”, as they are aching to tell me their plans, my reply, “ I retired 20 years ago — I do this for fun”, rains on their parade.
You have one life — live in the moment — there is no second chance no matter what some religious insurance policies may promise.
