Catch-22: Are You Frightened Of Giving Up A Well Paid Job to Have a More Satisfying Life?
So, you’re a professional type working in a large corporation. You are well qualified academically and have held jobs with increasing responsibilities. Now you have a family, maybe kids at or about to go to college. Plus you are paid well, good healthcare scheme, pension being funded well. It all sounds very good: the envy of many, even. But…repeated downsizings, reorganisations and corporate ‘nonsense’.
Are you really sure this job is what you are on this planet to do?
For many of you, the answers will be: ‘Maybe’, ‘No’ & ‘Probably not’.
But you’re stuck anyway. Because the money every month is too good to let go. Even if you are clear what your ‘dream life’ is. Even if you can see your dream life as eventually being more profitable in money terms. Plus, giving you freedom to do more of the things you don’t seem to have time for. Like, being with the family, teaching your kids to play football, taking long vacations.
It’s a Catch-22. You’ve got to be crazy to leave such a job with all that it allows you to have. But to stay means that you will find yourself under more pressure to do more. In Joseph Heller’s book, ‘they’ kept raising the number of missions that bomber crews had to fly before they were sent home. Sound familiar?
Catch-22 has got into our culture. But most people are not aware that there is a way out. And the way out is not to do with the central character in the book, Yossarian. Rather it is to do with his room mate, Orr.
There Is A Way Out of Catch 22
Wikipedia explains:
“Orr is a fictional character in the classic novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Orr is a World War II bomber pilot who shares a tent with his good friend, the protagonist of the novel, Yossarian. Described as “a warm-hearted, simple-minded gnome,” Orr is generally considered crazy. His most notable feature is repeatedly being shot down over water, but, until his final flight, always managing to survive along with his entire crew. On his final flight, perhaps two-thirds of the way through the novel, he is again shot down into the Mediterranean, and is lost at sea. Only in the last ten pages of the novel does Heller reveal that Orr’s crashes were part of an elaborate (and successful) plot to escape the war.
Orr is the only airman of the group to successfully get away by the end of the novel.”
So how do you ‘crash your plane safely’ in corporate life?
It’s about practicing something that your job does not ask you to do. It must be useful, actually vital, to take you to where you are going. Orr practiced living in a survival dinghy, learning to fish and staying optimistic. None of these were needed for his job, but were needed to get away safely.
So what might these things be for you?