Denial
Let me start by admitting I never really aspired to become a manager, much
less a Supply Chain Manager. To this day, my parents cannot understand how I
can plan, (help) produce and deliver more than 1000 tonnes of fast moving consumer
goods from factories to warehouses across India every month, but can still not pack my own suitcase convincingly
(actually I can – just not convincingly).
Simply put, production and distribution
planning was never in the scheme of
things.
But here we all are.
Anger
As it is with most problems that
beset me at work, this was an optimal solution. An acceptable product of 10% luck, 20% skill, 15% concentrated power
of will, 5% pleasure and 50% pain, with no real reason to remember the name
(yet). And as optimal solutions and The
Rolling Stones go – you don’t always get what you want, just what you need.
That is perhaps the most under-appreciated, indigestible piece of truth that
us, over-privileged, inexperienced, pseudo-intellectual millennials with a
self-destructive sense of entitlement, understand only when it becomes
impossible to ignore. This happens, not in the moment you realise that your
current predicament is a direct consequence of a near point-less education
system built for/by a society that values very specific hacks, which ultimately have little or no relevance in the world beyond the guardianship
of its various institutions. It happens when you eventually fall into perfect resonance
with this reality, instead of eternally hoping for an escape that doesn’t
exist.
Depression
Such experiences are born from an
initial lack of belongingness. When armchair philosophers, self-styled liberals
and rebels like us, start working for any of the million private corporate
establishments masquerading as inter-subjective realities with an ideology
(read vision and mission), and get to start discovering first-hand the effects
of capitalism on humanity. Closely behind religion, the virtues of this second
biggest social experiment in the history of civilisation, are exceeded (and
eventually completely clouded) by the combined wrath of seven deadly sins it
unleashes upon its unwitting subjects. The progressive counter culture of years
of hippy hostel life suddenly gives way to a resentful regime where caffeine
and adrenaline power you through numerous social charades of the weekdays,
while nicotine, alcohol and some choicest Schedule I narcotics patiently wait
to carry you across the existential crises of weekends. This is perhaps the
most consistent behaviour pattern across 1st generation urban
millennial workforce, who have slowly discovered that there are no answers and that
everyone is navigating through the same mysteries with different points of
view.
Bargain
Financial independence is the deal
with the devil that we prepare for our entire lives. It is an oft dramatic
consequence of a series of conscious choices - each with a different balance
between mind and heart – which constitute the opening acts of our tryst with
adulthood, the first fruit of our capitalistic endeavours. Its enormous
bounties and distractions serve as perfect anaesthetics to the pangs of nihilistic
realisations, but in process, start sowing the seeds of acceptance and complacency
that eventually grow into our identity. In time, as the greenback boogie picks
tempo, these anaesthetics become a steady prescription against the malaise of
dreams and aspirations. Few more years down the line, the prescription becomes
the diet and the red pills get flushed down the drain as integration with the matrix
mainframe is now complete.
Acceptance
Humanity may be overrated but its
ability to adapt and keep growing out of its own follies isn’t – like an
organism constantly evolving to an increasingly hostile environment. After
years, even decades, of internal and external conflicts, we realise it is easier
to accept some things than to keep struggling against them. The only difference
is how gracefully one can accomplish this without compromising our distinctive
individuality. Most of us wear faces to help us get through this eternal
pendulum swing between relapse and recovery, telling each other the same lies,
over and over again. The few who don’t, just haven’t found one that fits them
yet. All in all it’s just a-nother brick
in the wall.
Workplace is as real as the real world that people used to talk about
in hushed tones, can get. To an
observer so inclined, it is an exciting social experiment that one gets to
participate in, each day - a dark, delectable melting pot of people with divergent
principles, peeves and personalities, all at different stages of corporate
evolution. It has the capacity to take you through the entire emotional
spectrum on a daily basis, and in process lend you a deeper understanding of
who you really are. It teaches us the importance of emotional and social
intelligence – abstract concepts which should but can never be a part of organised education.
It teaches us about consequences- of
having to live with the smallest of choices and decisions, most of which seem
deceptively inconsequential and low-stake at first sight. In this way, it constitutes the
most dramatic part of our life long journey to self-discovery, that most of us
misread as a mere 9 to 5.
But that’s only because the matrix
is designed to keep you distracted long enough from asking the questions that
really matter:
“Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those
without. Beneath our poised appearance, the truth is, we are completely out of
control. You see there is only one constant. One universal. It is the only real
truth - Causality. There is no escape from it. We are forever slaves to it. Our
only hope, our only peace, is to understand it, to understand the why. “Why” is
what separates us from them, you from me. “Why” is the only real source of
power. Without it, you are powerless.”
