This morning, I woke up to a text from a friend about another friend who was promoted to a senior position in the company I used to work for (and that is why I should remember to not engage in any kind of social immediately after getting up).
What I felt on seeing the text was “that should have been me, I deserve it, this is unfair”, I am not yet sure what this feeling is called. I was not envious, not jealous, but I did feel that I had not been given my due.
Lucky for me, I have a long experience with this particular feeling as I seen many people whom I used to consider compatriots (and hence a reference point), go on to get senior positions while I was “left behind”.
This inclination – to measure my worth by cherry picking aspects of other people’s lives – I am not sure when I acquired it but ever since I did it has rarely been of help.
Call it destiny, call it bad luck, call it lack of skill but when it comes to my MBA class, it feels I am bringing up the rear.
It feels I am so far behind the other riders that even the dust has settled on the corner by the time I reach it.
And so, I have felt the feeling many times over and each time it derailed my day and I had to work to get back on track.
But since I have experience with the feeling and I am a little older and wiser now, I am able to avoid taking the feeling as truth and instead put it to the test by asking two kinds of questions:
- Questions about me
- Am I willing to do the lifestyle modifications and pretentious signalling that may be required to get that position? Do I have that much time to exchange for a job title?
- Am I willing to take the additional responsibility and the additional time commitment that comes along with the position?
- How did they become your benchmark? Did they have exactly the same environment, challenges and opportunities that you did while growing up?
- Questions about luck
- What role did being in the right place at the right time have to do with the person getting the promotion?
- How quickly can you be given a senior position if luck be on your side?
- How quickly can a position be taken away?
The first set of questions help me quickly course correct as I am able to (once again) realise that I would not want a life with the extra responsibility robbing me of the time I only have so little of.
But the second set of questions has a more interesting impact: they dissolve the object of immediate concern but leave behind more fundamental questions of identity, meaning and a good life.
The ego loves a good identity, in fact it loves identities so much that it collects them like someone might collect shoes, watches of dresses.
But the thing is: it does not know it is collecting those identities.
It just collects them unknowingly and realises that it had collected them when the identity if affirmed or challenged in any way.
Over the years, without me realising it, my ego seems to have collected the identity of a fast rising corporate worker. A few other identities it has collected are: “Fit and Healthy”, “Financially Well-Off”, “Intelligent and Smart”.
And whenever any of these (and ones that I am not able to recall right now) are challenged – like the “Fast Rising Knowledge Worker” was this morning – the ego feels like it has been challenged.
By asking those questions I mentioned earlier I am able to stop the ego from wallowing in its misery.
Everything in life is so fickle, changing and morphing every moment, nothing has ever remained the same.
I did not know these people a few years ago whose progress makes me feel bad today. The people whose progress will make me feel bad tomorrow I do not even know today.
The job title that seems inadequate to me today overjoyed me the two years ago that I got it.
I am one offer letter away from surpassing all titles and compensation of all of my MBA batch.
I am one CEO tantrum away from losing it all.
Coming and going, all of it, coming and going – what can I hold on to?
Whatever I will hold on to will go eventually, and if the ego has identified with it by then, bring with it the feeling of loss and suffering.
–
Aviral Prakash
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