Why I left a comfortable life for an uncertain one
Or the “mediocrity dilemma”
Not long ago I had to make the hard choice of quitting my job to start a company, or stay and enjoy what some would consider an already “successful” career. I had been working at this place for close to six years, I liked the job, had a decent salary, flexible hours, worked remotely from wherever I wished. I could easily have chosen the more natural path of staying for many more years, yet, as the title suggests, I decided to leave.
It took me several months to convince myself that it was a good decision, that it made sense. Now that it’s in the past and I can see things from a distance, I wonder why it was so difficult to get to that conclusion. Perhaps my months of agony and reflexion could be useful to other—unknowingly—trapped souls, making this note less about why I quit my job and more about why others should consider quitting theirs.
Why is it so difficult? There’s a time, generally right after college, when switching jobs is a simple matter. Then, one day, we find ourselves several years into a job, content with what we have. We’ve adapted to whatever lifestyle we reached by then and forget to look further. We decide to just keep going with life. I had gotten to that phase. The phase where one’s life stops moving, stalls, gets to a stand still. Some call that stability; I call it complacency, then mediocrity. The longer one stays, the deeper one sinks into that state of complacency.
I would like to believe that this mediocrity is not an inherent characteristic of the human being, at least not to such degree that it so deeply affects one’s life. Instead, I think that, as time passes things change gradually, slowly, to the extent that they appear to remain unchanged. During this time we build webs—we buy a house, get married, have kids, we build our lives—but these webs hang from a single thread: our job. This thread can be so flimsy that it’s better to not even think of disrupting it. Perhaps it is the fear of losing that nest we’ve built that steers us to accept that having something—no matter how lousy that something is—is better than risking to lose it all.
We live in a culture that drives us to live a life we wouldn’t be able to live otherwise, but that comes at the expense of our independence as it imposes a strong dependency on our job. There are many ways of weakening that dependency to our job. In my case, I planned ahead and saved enough money so that when the day came to quit I could do it until my new project (whatever it was) took off. Even so, it was difficult to let go. It is difficult to let go of habits, of routine. Maybe it’s not the job itself that gives us the sense of safety, but rather the routine, the quotidian repetition that has proved not to fail over the years.
What would life be if we could simply read each of the steps—and missteps—that we would take as children, youths, adults, seniors? I can’t stand the thought that for the next many years I will sit somewhere knowing my everyday schedule down to the minute. That’s like ending something that’s far from reaching an end. That’s what got me thinking about the expiration date of some things, about how this need to find meaning to life far outweights the security, routine and wealth I could have had.
Why would anyone leave the comfort of their home to go climb a mountain? The answer to this question tends to have a polarized response, where only those that do it can justify and understand such discomfort and risk for an intangible reward. I can tell you: It’s totally worth it! Should you quit your job? It takes a lot to fight that tendency we have for mediocrity. If you are staying for the wrong reasons, quit, challenge yourself, and find a way to make that decision work with the rest of your life’s responsibilities. I hope others decide to go for the ride and not choose the easy way out. I’m looking forward to what the new life has for me.
