How I Escaped My Corporate Fate and Decided to Choose Myself
By: Jamie Jackson
Tags: Work, Self-awareness, Spirituality, Life Lessons, Entrepreneurship

“Once you realise you deserve a bright future, letting go of your dark past is the best choice you will ever make.”

― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

We all make bad choices but sometimes they only become apparent when life is pulled so far off course you don’t recognise who you are anymore.

For whatever reason, some of us double down, grit our teeth and push on through, and never stop making the wrong choice, even when truth stares us in the face.

I realise that now. Corporate work gave me a stark vision of a possible future and made me realise I had been making the wrong choice for 20 years.

It all came to a head this year. I had reached 42, still working in an office, looking at my manager, eight years my senior, who was cranky as hell. He was miserable, under pressure, pale and balding; the archetype of middle-aged misery.

He talked lots about how much TV he watched. Boasted, even.

He had an app that clocked up the hours of mindless escapism he had indulged in, a measurement of existential despair in prime colours and interactive graphs.

He’d made a bad choice. He didn’t seem to realise he wasn’t meant to be there, in that office, but I saw him and I saw his mistake. Somewhere down the line, he’d chosen to stay small, and now, there he sat.

He was unhappy and stressed and about every two weeks, it erupted out of him.

He shouted, berated his team, swore, told people to “fuck off” — the rage spilled over as incongruence gnawed at his soul.

He didn’t seem to realise this was the cause of his woe, I think he felt the irritation but didn’t connect it to anything deeper.

Still, it couldn’t be kept in, the rage, it bubbled just below the surface, the existential angst caused him to hot-foot from steady leader to explosive child, back and forth and forth and back as he held on to a crust of sanity between two extremes, never quite managing to be either.

He’d made a mistake. He shouldn’t be in an office but he’s 50 and this is his bed now. A bed of nails. Lie down, get comfortable, this is yours, you chose it.

Someone once told me “if you can’t find someone you want to be in the place you work, then you should quit.”

These words rattled in my head as he loomed, one singular rung above me on the corporate hierarchy, a walking, talking half-man on autopilot, who dared not think too deeply about concepts such as happiness and meaning else the walls of reality would come crashing down and a tsunami of truth would sweep him away like a bamboo beach hut.

During this time, there has been a great deal of political quarrelling above us, the corporate gods argued and it rippled down the chain of command in gentle lapping waves of agitation.

Sooner or later, it came to fruition and our departmental director was unceremoniously ousted, a sacrificial lamb slaughtered to appease someone, somewhere, I suppose.

With expediency that raised more questions than it resolved, a new man arrived to fill the vacant post.

He came with smiles, big ideas, ugly PowerPoint presentations and buzzwords of encouragement from the book of ‘How to be a Leader’.

Everyone had seen the book, no one told him.

Immediately, he displayed signs of cracking under pressure.

It’s easy to understand why, his predecessor didn’t play ball and there he now sat, in the vacated throne, a Damoclesian sword dangling above his hairless head. He’d been brought in to solve the political machinations above him and everyone considered him “their man” but because of this, he could be no one’s and the stress of this inevitability was his burden to bear.

He began looking more stressed with each appearance he made. He arranged his face to talk to others, but I saw him, I saw him because he was my manager, only another rung up, just one choice ahead, a little older, a little balder, a little fatter.

He too had made a mistake. He too shouldn’t have been there.

Perhaps he knew something my manager did not, he was more self-aware after all, but whatever his wisdom, it did not matter, he was tied in, committed, he’d made promises, this was his only egg, his only basket.

At his age — I’m guessing mid-50’s — his life could have been anything, but it was crumpled suits from long commutes, high-pressured meetings, weekend working and the endless toil of trying to please everyone, but instead pleasing no one, simply disappointing one person here, one person there, watch how it unfolds, watch how it unravels, watch his undoing as the corporate gods rattle him as they have rattled us.

I watched these two men, both my superiors, live out their bad choices. I watched as they chose them over and over, I watched them lose the war of attrition on their spirits.

Regret hadn’t consumed them yet, not wholly, it had only frayed their edges, but I saw it coming. One day, it will be all they feel.

It is in my reflection of these men that I realised it never stops. The mistake, the bad choice, it never ceases to be made, each day, each minute, each hour, unless you choose again, unless you choose differently.

I was these men also, just a bit younger, just a bit slimmer, just with a bit more hair.

The three of us were all on the same road, on the same conveyor belt, on the same mouse wheel.

Their mistake was my mistake, it was our mistake.

The only difference between the three of us was how far down the wrong road we had decided to travel, how much we had gritted our teeth and doubled down on our wrong choices.

It doesn’t need to be this way. Life is not a trap.

The stars in the night sky shine down from the past and looking up at them is looking up at what once was.

In the corporate world, looking up at those above us is looking at what is to come. At what could be.

Above me, all I saw were the ghosts of Christmas Future, but those two men didn’t yet know they were ghosts. They seemed alive, they walked, talked, made tea, buttoned-up shirts, put on ties, and sent emails, but were simply not there.

These two men had long abandoned a search for meaning. Instead, they found themselves in the reflection of a gleaming axel, a shiny cog, a turning wheel, seeking answers in the grinding gears of corporate machinery.

They didn’t realise they too were made from cold, hard steel.

For almost 20 years I had wandered down the corporate road, for almost two decades I was empty and miserable, sacrificing my dreams on the cross of certainty.

It took me that long for my bad choice to come into sharp focus. There it is, I see it now, my inevitable future shown to me in the reflection of two broken men.

That day — when I saw my reflection and a painful epiphany arrived — I left the office and never went back.

The reality, of course, was messier, less impulsive, less romantic, but that day I spiritually checked out.

It was the first day I did something right. It was the first day I saw my bad choice and decided to choose differently because it never stops unless you stop choosing it.

And that’s all it takes, one new choice for one new life.