Your Job Probably Won't Be a Pathway to lasting Happiness...

Why is it that all of these women have somehow become so enamored with the idea of a career being this wonderful, life-fulfilling thing with no parallel in modern society?  How have they come to the conclusion that, of all the things that you can do to fulfill your life and make yourself happy, that working for a corporation for a paycheck is somehow the ultimate fulfillment of your life? 

I like my job.  I enjoy doing it, and my career is full of personal accomplishments for which I’m proud, but let’s be completely honest – it is a means to an end, and nothing more. My career exists so that I can support my family and give them a good life.  Full.  Stop.

Without my family, my life would be empty and hollow – full of personal accomplishment and luxury, but without any real meaning.

If I was independently wealthy tomorrow, there is no fucking way that I’d be doing this stressful shit day in and day out. 

I don’t understand the people who think that a career can make a person happy.  I can’t remember the last person I’d met who dedicated their life to a career, to the sacrifice of other things like family, and was honestly happy.  Most of them are miserable, avaricious, self-serving jackasses who think that that next promotion, or the next big deal will finally grant them the happiness that they’ve been searching for all their lives, and it pains me to see that it never does. 

Feminists in general have simply failed to recognize this.  They’ve become so “grass is greener on the other side” that they’ve failed to see that it isn’t. 

I read an article the other day about how women just want it all  - a “kick-ass career”, as she put it, and a family that loves her.  I’m not saying that it is impossible to have both of those things, but I’ll bet if you polled women at the end of their lives, who had tried to have both, and asked them which of those two actually met the expectations of what they would be, that the vast majority would tell you that their “kick-ass career” was a massive disappointment, even if they did do something cool for a living. 

Never mind that most women don’t – let’s face it, the female of our species is far less inclined to risk and the responsibility associated with that.  The “glass ceiling” that feminists are constantly whining about isn’t a result of women being discriminated against – no, it’s a result of most women just not wanting to move beyond positions where they don’t have to put their necks on the line on a daily basis.  So most women fall into support roles – nurses, secretaries, administrative assistants, accounts receivables…  jobs that don’t require a lot of risk taking and a lot of executive decision making. 

Your job isn’t going to make you happy, no matter what you call it.  You aren’t biologically wired to take more than a few hours worth of satisfaction from your accomplishments – otherwise, before we had reason, we’d be sitting back on our laurels congratulating ourselves about how we killed that mammoth two years ago while we starved to death.   Lasting happiness can’t come from a job.  Can.  Not.  It is contrary to our biology in every way. 

Find what is going to make you happy and go for it with gusto, but be warned – if you think that your job is that thing, you will most likely be in for a huge surprise.