Opting Out of the Grind

Opting Out of the Grind: A Manifesto for My Fellow Burnt-Out, Post-Cancer Comrades

The world will give you no shortage of opportunity. They are everywhere you go.

The world will give you no surplus of time. Even now, reading this, each second, another second is lost. And it can never come back.

Picture this: a 39-year-old single man, one year after cancer treatment. One year after the worst 6 months of life, by far. One year after the golden opportunity to survive, to live, to participate in the gift that is being alive.

Picture this: You are a young adult, and you will continue working in your career until retirement age–if you are lucky enough to survive another 30 years, that is. For 5 out of 7 days per week, minus a few week’s vacation, and a handful of major holidays, you will wake up uncomfortably early, tired and cold, and dreading what’s to come. You wake up so early because you need coffee to wake up, you need to have a bowel movement or you will be uncomfortable all day, you need to eat breakfast, you need to take a shower, and you need to leave early enough to arrive on time for your 8:00 am job. You are out of the house by 7 am, because an hour long commute in this city is commonplace, and you also know what it’s like to be stressed by traffic and wondering if you’ll be late, wondering if your boss will understand this time, or if you’ll find another passive aggressive memo on “the importance of punctuality” not-so-subtly-addressed to the entire workplace staff.

You will stand in the bitter chill of the wind by the bus, or you will walk through cold air and smoky bus fumes and blaring sirens to the train station, or you will drive on the frenetic expressway while cars weave in and out, accelerating and honking and merging without signal. You will ride on the train next to a young kid who is too cool to use the handrail, whose body will fall roughly into you whenever there’s a speed bump, who will then apologize, maybe, even though this crossing of a physical boundary will trigger your trauma-response–and the worst part is that you saw it coming a mile away, and just wanted to scream at him to hold onto the fucking handrail because this world does not feel safe, at least not any longer for you.

You will go through your workday, with toxic coworkers, or a toxic boss, and the general frustrations of a large bureaucratic system. You will try to stay centered, but the politics of the workplace will come sweeping through you like a storm. You will make the same exact commute back home, exhausted, sweaty, arriving at last to your apartment and having to spend the last remnants of your energy reading some self-help article about how to not let toxic coworkers steal your joy or take away your peace.

You will think about what you will cook for dinner, and all the chores you haven’t even started yet, and how you must repeat this all tomorrow, and by the way, your salary barely meets your living expenses, and if you are super lucky, your retirement account will be intact by the time you’re 65.

This is but a glimpse into the system we’ve opted into. And I, for one, am opting out. Life is short, fragile, unpredictable, and precious. And it is not for spending one’s time like this.

We do live in a society unfortunately where not hustling, not grinding, not living as indentured servants feels impossible, if for no other reason than to have decent enough health insurance so that you can get adequate medical care and not go bankrupt should you fall seriously ill again.

I am opting out. I am opting out of spending my most valuable resource–time–in a way that is not aligned with my values and needs.

There is a time and place for productivity, motivation, and deep work. And I’d love to get to that place again. But my body, my mind, and my soul have been through far too much for my age. I need rest. I WANT rest. I want sunlight. I want idleness. I want leisure. I want space and quiet and peace and I want the serenity of surrendering to the things I still CAN do, in a reality where there is so much, I can no longer do.

Simply put, I want to heal–I want my entire soul and being to heal. I want to do what feels right, in the brief sprinkle of life and time that I’m given.

If I get sick again, I don’t want to look back and say I spent my healthy years as a slave. If I remain healthy then when I’m finally on my deathbed, I don’t want to look back and say, good job, you killed yourself so that “you can probably retire comfortably.” What absurdity is this?

Living starts NOW. Not at 65. I don’t want to live in a way that feels so cruel to my creative and curious spirit. Life is too short for cruelty. I am opting out of a cruel existence. I am opting out of the expectations of our material-obsessed, wealth-obsessed, retirement-obsessed, grind-obsessed culture and society.

I am going to live on my own terms–or die trying. This is my promise to myself–the self who almost died, who wanted so badly to survive. Living necessarily includes suffering, but it should not have to be a life where suffering is the predominant feature. I will craft my own life and my own destiny for myself, and all the doubters can think what they think, and feel how they feel.

I am opting out of the life that feels forced upon us. I am opting in to a life of my heart’s authentic choosing–whatever that might look like.

This is my life. And I will do anything to keep it mine.