To my dismay, giving advice usually backfires. Even my own husband does’t take my advice; how dare he! If I had my way, my friends and family would quit their corporate jobs and do something else; it doesn’t matter what, just anything else.
Fortunately for my friends and family, and for the world, I am not in charge. Although I do day dream about setting our current societal systems ablaze - splattering some oil, lighting a match, and walking away; tic tick boom - I don’t act on my violent impulses and cause destruction - but I do like to think about revolution.
Dreaming about a revolution is fun. But not a violent revolution; no guns allowed. I imagine a much more quiet revolution, where new ideas and beliefs seep into the culture, slowly at first, but then very quickly. The spread is exponential growth. Most people will say things like, “I was blindsided” and “I can’t believe I don’t understand what is happening” and “I don’t know my own nation anymore.”
I have already started hearing murmurings like these, and you probably have too. Funny enough, I got the quotes, and changed them a little for simplicity, from Svetlana Alexievich’s book, Secondhand Time, about the Soviet Union’s transition from socialism to capitalism.
My grandparents, who grew up in the Soviet Union, think that progressives today are socialists. It’s hard to debate with them because I don’t fully understand the difference between communism and socialism. I’m pretty sure they don’t either; most people don’t, unless you deeply studied the Soviet Union, or other non-capitalistic regimes.
Ha, here I go pretending like I have the answers. Funny how people do that; funny how we think our little worldview can be applied to the vastness of the world; funny how we can rationalize ourselves into mental dead-ends.
I really don’t want for most of my friends and family to quit their corporate jobs, or even to consider it, because I would have to field too many questions…and give advice. I can hear the pushback already: “but, Rika, you did it, you quit the corporate world… you’re the expert..help me!”
LOL.
And I would say something like, “No…I am not an expert. YOU are. You are the only person who has agency over your life, and what worked for me may or may not work for you. Don’t try to be another me..I already exist..be a better version of YOU.”
As humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers said,
“The good life is a process, not a state of being. It’s a direction, not a destination. This process won’t always bring feelings of happiness, contentment, and bliss, and it may even sometimes cause pain and heartache.”
The process of leaving the corporate world is like immigrating to a new country. It’s a slow burn of unlearning and shedding old ideas, beliefs, and ways of being, because they no longer work. As any immigrant knows, the first few years, maybe even ten, of immigration is like constantly being caught with your pants down. You think you understand something, but you meet someone who challenges your view, and you realize you don’t actually understand it; but you grow from the experience, and you learn.
You learn that the social label of “expert” is an arbitrary designation - an emblem that quickly gets flushed down the toilet, along with all of the advice you ever gave and received. How’s that for a revolution?
If you want to learn more about my story, how I transitioned from the corporate world to crypto and Web3, you can read this short story that I wrote as part of a short story anthology on DAOs. If you have no idea what the last sentence means, no worries; you are not alone. In short, there is a technology revolution happening right now, that will probably impact you at some point. I left my corporate job to take part in this revolution (no guns, it’s a calm exponential growth of memes kind of revolution). Enjoy!
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Your willingness to think out of the box and constantly evolve and reinvent yourself is inspirational