Many years ago, when I was a graduate student, a much older man commented that the working life in America was like riding the tiger. It is great as long as you are on the tiger; but, should you fall off, well, ...
He was contrasting life here with life in the old country. India had yet to open up its economy, and the Nehru influence had yet to fade in the political economy of the country. Life was slow and predictable.
In the decades since, careerists in India too are riding their own tigers.
A fear of falling off the tiger keeps us going to work every day. For many people, working every night too. Through all that work, there is a nagging thought that maybe it is okay to get off and the tiger will merely move on without causing any harm.
Some of us develop plans on when exactly we want to get off the tiger's back. I was one of those.
And then I was rudely pushed off.
I am beginning to think that it is the best thing that could have happened to me! The cosmos and I have a strange relationship in which I am regularly surprised by its mysterious actions.
Turns out that after the rude push from the tiger's back, I can just be, without doing anything. I can now be the metaphorical guy who enjoys life by idling away his time by the river.
The pandemic triggered my layoff, yes. The same pandemic has also led many to voluntarily quit working, or at least hit the pause button.
These people are generally well-educated workers who are leaving their jobs not because the pandemic created obstacles to their employment but, at least in part, because it nudged them to rethink the role of work in their lives altogether. Many are embracing career downsizing, voluntarily reducing their work hours to emphasize other aspects of life.
It is as if the pandemic "threw everyone into Walden Pond."
Of course, that is a reference to Thoreau's Walden.
A long, long time ago, before I had even caught the scent of the tiger, back when I was a teenager in the sleepy township, I skimmed through that book. I skimmed it because it was way over my abilities to comprehend the ideas. I was far too young and immature to think about the profound issues that Thoreau was presenting to me.
Thanks to the layoff, I am now off the tiger. I find that I am by the gorgeous Walden Pond.
Thoreau’s goal was to calculate the specific cost of eliminating deprivation from his life. He wanted to establish a hard accounting of how much money was required, at a minimum, to achieve reasonable shelter, warmth, and food. This was the cost of survival. Work beyond this point was voluntary. Some of the sharpest insights of “Walden” are found in Thoreau’s probing of why we work so hard for things that are inessential. While surveying the farmers surrounding him in the Concord countryside, Thoreau saw peers “crushed and smothered” by the endless hours of work required to manage larger and larger land holdings. These farmers were motivated, he noted, by the emerging consumer economy that was being driven by the industrial revolution. More land meant more earning, and more earning meant more access to shiny copper pumps or Venetian blinds—to name two products that Thoreau called out specifically.
How many copper pumps do I really need? If I don't need them, I don't have to ride the tiger either.
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