Why life stopped being fun after you grew up?
Because you are doing it alone instead of with a group of friends. When you are in school, you had your friends, you shared the same goal, you had the same age and the same sense of humor. You were all taking life as a group.
When things got Hard, you knew you were not alone. There were these other friends who are facing the same challenges. They were friends, not colleagues. You had that sense of belonging and community that is ingrained in us. That sense existed because you had so much in common, including the circumstances and the shared goals. It was not that random, these friends shared your social class, your level of energy and level of life challenges. You could relate on too many levels. And then comes the job.
In the job, they tried to replicate that. But there are two problems:
- Your colleagues are not your friends. You might connect with few but you don’t have that much in common, most likely you didn’t even choose to be there. Neither in school but school is fun so you don’t mind.
- You don’t believe in the goal that brought you together in the first place. In the job, they try to create that fake sense of belonging, by forcing everyone to be in the office everyday. Even when your job doesn’t require that. That’s the main reason why everyone should go back to office now. Because otherwise that fake sense of belonging will go away.
Nothing is wrong with a job, but it has to be seen for what it is so that people are able to make informed decisions without all the tricks they apply (intentionally or not) in the 9–5. A job is simply selling your time for money and there is nothing wrong with that. It is not the best way to participate to society. Your colleagues are not you friends (some of them could become), and your company is not a family. You do not share that much with the people you are working with. Not necessarily the values, not the drive, not the energy.
There are two ways out of this scenario:
- You do what you care about with people you choose, entrepreneurship.
- You get that sense of community somewhere else than your job. Your job will still suck but you see it for what it is and you should also know exactly the exchange rate: How much money you are making for every hour you are spending in the place of work with these random set of people that were chosen for you.
