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Dying to Live - An MBA's Last Resignation Letter

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Dear Boss,
I write this letter today to tell you that I lied to you.
Yes, you heard me right. Not once, not twice, but every day since the last 11 years that I've been working here, I lied to you. In every nuance of my voice and in every gesture of my body, I lied.
Still, I did not consider myself guilty of deceit. That is so because I lied to myself too. And my lies were so convincing that I actually thought I was telling everyone only the truth. I have been lying since my first day at work many years ago, not only to you but to all the bosses I have had in the past 19 years. It flowed in my veins and nourished my ravenous ambition to have a successful career; I never suspected myself of lying for even a second.
But what happened last night has flustered my conscience to a degree irreparable by any amount of commiseration or any false promise of success. As I turned back to leave my 10 year old son's room after putting him to bed, I heard his meek whisper, "daddy, can I say something to you?" I immediately walked back to him and stood right next to his bed, "sure my angel, what do you want to say?"
"I am proud of you dad" he said. "I am proud of you for being the youngest VP in your entire company and for achieving so many awards for your work." I listened carefully in anticipation of a deeper message to follow as I noticed his starry little eyes looking straight into my tired soulless eyes. He went on, "but daddy, I would be prouder if you were as happy as you used to be before you got so busy." I patted his head and walked out of the room.
Back in my bed, I called to mind how my father could not afford to send me to school and how he had to sell his car to pay my semester fees when I had joined college. I remembered how he used to console my mother by saying that everything would be fine once I started to make a living for myself. All I needed was an MBA and our world would turn into a Utopian paradise of progress and prosperity. How grounded I thought our hopes and aspirations were.
While I laid there, all my years being at work flashed right in front of my eyes. I saw myself staying back at work one night to finish a report that the CEO was to present to the directors next day. I missed my son's seventh birthday that day and came back home to see a piece of cake on the dining table with a handwritten note from him saying, "dad, I wish you were here tonight." I also recalled the day I left with a delegation to China after I had volunteered in place of a colleague who had taken a couple of days off to attend his mother's funeral. The next day my son was to be given the 'best student of the year' award in an extravagant ceremony at school.
As I write this letter to you so leisurely sitting here at home this morning, I recall how rushed my mornings always have been. I never had enough time to have a decent breakfast, or sometimes, a breakfast at all. I recall how I was always getting late for something or the other. Still, I always used to think to myself, what if I could not make this world a Utopian paradise of prosperity for my parents who breathed their last without giving up their unwavering trust in my commitment to my career. A generation lost is a generation saved, I thought.
Then my mind drifted to recollect the tedious lessons I learned in business school; how the ultimate goal of an enterprise is to maximize profit and how professionals like us contribute to steer the economy forward, contributing our remarkable wisdom to create jobs and propel the wheel of holy capitalism. Things like ROI, opportunity cost, SWOT and efficiency of production crossed my mind.
I then paused to reflect on my position in this whole quagmire of hawkish competition and insatiable combative lust for money and power. I thought to myself "who have I been working for?" Certainly not for myself, or for my dead parents, or for my family. What about my ROI and my opportunity cost? More importantly, what about my happiness and my son's pride? I thought and thought and thought.
This morning, as I write this letter to you, I feel the wisdom of my son's innocuous expression weigh heavier than all of the thick books I had studied at business school. All the missed opportunities of spending time with him as he was growing up, all those missed breakfasts and wedding anniversaries, each of my projects' milestones that distracted me from appreciating my life's significant landmarks as I rushed past them towards the Utopia my father had dreamed of for me, had made me an unhappier person. And the irony is, I have been lying to myself and to you whenever I said or implied that this was my dream, my passion, my life's work. I was programmed from an early age to ignore my inner calling and misinterpret life and the meaning of success. I had been fooled to think that making the rich richer with your sweat and blood keeps you happy. Career success and making a living off fixed salary is the holy grail of success in the modern corporatized world of Orwellian well-being. The truth is, I lied.
As much as I had convinced myself that I was living the dream, the truth is that I had only been dying to live. It wasn't my dream to let my employers work my tail off so that they could get away with all the profit I worked to earn for them. I sneered at the concept of work-life-balance because I was brainwashed into believing that my sacrifice amounts to something. I thought of myself as a significant member of the elite power that makes the world go round. I lied to you because I was lied to.
I know you would be in awe, thinking how I was able to achieve such enviable professional success if this wasn’t even my dream. The truth is, I don’t know how. Perhaps being lied to made me capable of achieving this mirage of success. Imagine then, what chasing the truth would have made me capable of achieving. My dream was to have a small business of my own, to see it grow and to cherish the fruits of my own labour. That was my dream.
The brightness of my son’s eyes tell me that all is not lost. He will fulfill his dream. I will not let him be lied to. I will let him find the truth that the book of life would teach him, not the textbooks. He will learn the concepts of ROI, opportunity cost, profit maximization and risk management as they apply to human lives, not corporations. He will live his dream, and mine too. He will not die to live but to live and be happy for the choices he made.
Please accept my resignation as I have accepted another job, working for myself. Starting today, I will work on my own terms, not fearing those who have had the absolute power to disparage me all my life. This is not my resignation only to you but also to the entire world system that has made us humans mere slaves of the whims of the haves.
Sincerely,
Employee
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