The other day at work while eating lunch by myself and glancing outside the window into a man made lake with God made ducks, I was trying to figure out how am I going to get all this work planned and delivered on time. The delicious bites of monte cristo was making it very demanding to concentrate, and I decided to take a freaking break from all of it and just gaze outside and enjoy my lunch.

Within minutes, my wandering thoughts about ducks in the lake turned into excruciating realities of corporate crap that surrounds most of us in our 20’s or 30’s something. I mean here I am in a building that does not belong to me, on a desk that does not have my name, a laptop that I didn’t pay for, high speed internet that for the only time I didn’t ask for, and a telephone that I don’t want to ever pick up. These things keep me hostage, far away from the freedom enjoyed by the ducks in the path of my vision.

I find it ludicrous when I think about it. We are working for clients we barely know at a personal level, on unprecedented deadlines that have become a corporate fad, with attention to details that we woefully miss at the remains of our personal life, and relentless dedication that dooms us submerged into the depths of what I would like to refer from now on as the ‘corporate mafia’. Make no mistake - mafia it is. It makes you do the work, leaves you with no option, sets the rules, pays you enough for you to keep coming back, and ensures you are not around to see your kid play cricket. All these sacrifices so that we remain socially acceptable in this robotic society we have turned ourselves into with the turn of the centaury. This begs the question, have we forgotten the difference between what is ridiculous verses sublime?

The ridiculous being - all this slavery so that we can grow inches on our plasma, eat finer cuts of meat, upgrade to a new gadgets that we most likely already own, plan our next fancy vacation to wonderland, and buy a Tag Huer to tell us the time that we are loosing by the day. And the sublime being - spending 2 hours over a lunch on a Wednesday, calling friends and family for as long as you want, spending some time with the girl at starbucks that actually smiles at you and knows your name, and just be on a vacation without actually going anywhere.

Maybe I need to reclaim my life or maybe I just had a heavy work month. The point is that if we struggle to strike a balance, it is imperative we tilt towards the sublime than the ridiculous. Or else you will spend away like a sitting duck while the mafia will have the last laugh.