It all started with The Matrix although I didn’t know it then…
Back in 1999, I had just started in my current job, and was hungrily pursuing a corporate lifestyle: introducing new technology, writing management reports, answering calls for support. In my private life, I was following the six-step Social Expectations programme : graduate, get job, buy house, get married, have children, work until retirement or death.
In 2001, something happened which has been gnawing at my soul ever since. Our daughter was born the month after 9/11.
It’s hard to explain the effect this had, but I ended up questioning the world we had brought our child into. Essentially, I didn’t want my child to have the same predictable life mapped out for her, to become a societal drone. Can you imagine bringing a child into this world, full of potential, a blank canvas, and then painting the same dull grey life that everyone else lives?
And after a few years of corporate life, the soullessness of this existence has left me feeling empty and unfulfilled. I sit in on office meetings and breathe in the hot air of self-important middle-managers, marvelling at the pure absense of passion in their lives.
In the last couple of years, I’ve become aware of a growing movement of people who are starting to challenge the accepted route through life. The most powerful statement I’ve heard asserts that if we’re all individuals, then it is not possible for a 9-5 lifestyle to suit everybody. You know, trail yourself out of bed, go through the motions, work for 8 hours or more, go home have dinner and watch Emmerdale, blah, blah, blah….
The Tailspin
The end result of this questioning has me in a complete tailspin recently. But at the center of it all, there’s one question to ask: am I happy?
Fundamentally, no. I’m in a dull, unfulfilling job working for employers that couldn’t care less if I lived or died (I have my suspicious about their preference though!). I had a few job interviews recently, and as I walked out of the latest one, I knew that moving jobs would only be moving the problem. Too many companies are like bureaucratic in a negative way these days.
And so I’m at a very interesting point in life which is both terrifying, but exhilerating. I feel a tiny bit insane with a combination of opportunities and fears. I want to spend my life doing something worthwhile, that I enjoy and that means something to other people. I don’t think I was cut out to be a drone!
Where Does The Matrix Fit In?
The central premise of The Matrix is that there are two worlds: one is the complex social model that we have been taught and indoctrinated with and through which we filter all our life experiences, and the other is how things really are. So, in their heads, people are running around living normal lives, but the reality is that they are all drones powering a giant machine.
Society can convince you that just about anything is acceptable: the clamour for more and greater riches, buying a Land Rover when you could get by with a Ford Fiesta, two parents working full-time while someone else raises their children.
The reality is that more and more people are chasing fantasies instead of cutting back the crap in their lives and enjoying the simple things. What hurts is that most people are still unfulfilled and unhappy. Even more so, because they’re in debt to the eyeballs, but that’s a discussion for another day.
Here’s something to end on a bright note.
Wednesday, June 28th, 2006 // Family Life
