2020 Emancipated Me from Corporate Hell

My job evaporated under the glare of the global pandemic. 19 years of corporate diligence ended by an invisible virus that side-stepped borders and overturned social convention.

I was furloughed in March as society got flipped upside down. I stood in the living room as Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, announced schools were to be shut, sporting events were forthwith cancelled and pubs were to close. As he explained no one was allowed out more than once a day, a chill went up my back.

It felt like the start of a horror movie.

Yet, I felt oddly relaxed and even hopeful. Don't get me wrong, the virus terrified me. It still does. A friend of a friend in his 30's was put into an induced coma, another friend is dating a surgeon who tells him upsetting stories about young people in the ICU battling infection.

COVID-19 has been no joke, I felt like there was a war going on but I was 300 miles from the front line, having tea in an alpine village whilst brave people fought on my behalf.

Life had suddenly become oddly calm.

We were all told to stay home and stick to lockdown rules, that was "doing your bit." Television networks had #stayhome in the coroner of their broadcasts and the roads were eerily quiet. It was summer and no one quite knew what we were facing, so everyone stayed in their bubble.

My bubble is crowded - I'm married with 4 kids. We spent the next few months at home together, enjoying family meals each day, taking long dog walks in the evenings as the summer sun sat low in the sky. It felt as the work and money pressures of reality had wholesale stopped and there was an eternity of quiet stretching out in front of us.

For this I was grateful. We all bonded in a way that would be impossible under normal circumstances.

But there was something else, something more profound to come.

Corporate life had made me miserable. It wasn't that I just disliked my job, I hated myself for it. Society seems to underestimate the spiritual damage a bad career choice can inflict. It's a war of attrition, you slowly ebb away under an endless flow of meetings, deadlines, angry bosses, and the shedding of personal identity.

My time on furlough was revelatory. I'd never had the corporate burden lifted from my shoulders for so long, at least not for more than a fleeting holiday, and suddenly I had cognitive breathing space to assess my predicament.

I vowed never to go back. To never be that cruel to myself again.

Predictably, it came slowly at first, then all at once, a tsunami of emotion bursting through a mental dam.

One night in bed, I was watching a TED talk with author Geoff Thompson when he said the Rumi quote:

“Fear knocked on the door. Love answered, and no one was there.”

I burst into tears. I couldn't explain it, I was blindsided by the torrent of emotion pouring out. I never, ever cry. Deaths, divorces, yes perhaps, but at a quote?

I'd have paid little attention to it if it was not for the next night, the same thing happened. I was finishing some breathing exercises as sorrow and compassion came flooding out of me.

I sobbed hard.

I'm a big believer the body and mind send messages to us all the time about what we should do, where we should go, how we should spend our lives.

Intuition works endlessly to point us in the right direction. Yet we work endlessly to tune out that inner voice, to do what others tell us to curry favour and look "successful"

I had done this for years. In my search for stability and financial gain, I had pushed every artistic and creative impulse aside for a life behind the desk.

In those two nights of epiphany, I felt angry at myself, but more than that I felt compassion, true compassion for the scared and confused 20-something that kept choosing badly out of fear. I had been mentally self-harming for so long, it had seemed almost normal.

In July I was made redundant. A call with my manager and HR sealed the deal. It felt like a soul's emancipation. If it wasn't for 2020 and everything it has brought, I would still be in those carpet-tiled hallways, in a suit, in a cosy prison of my own making and for that, I am eternally grateful.

People flippantly talk of "a great reset" for society, but 2020 has been my great reset, it has been my realignment with who I really am.

Right now the world is in disarray. But it has been before and it will be again. Nonetheless, I have faith in humanity to prosper and grow. I'm sure I'm not alone in the mental epiphanies the pandemic has gifted me. It has brought us all closer together, it has made us realise how much we need each other. I miss silly things like queues, crowds, having to struggle to the bar in a busy pub. Oh to be in a room of people enjoying themselves.

These things will all return, and with it, a renewed populace.

I'm endlessly grateful for those on the medical front line fighting the virus, these are the real heroes of this war, I'm still just sipping tea in my alpine hideaway, but within me, a spiritual war has been won.

Never again will I treat myself so poorly, never again will I choose unhappiness over uncertainty. After all, if 2020 has shown us anything, it's that life is nothing but uncertainty. All we have it uncertainty and each other.