The girl who was “too ambitious” at 25 is now 35 and running the company that rejected her. The guy who called her “aggressive in meetings” is still in middle management, posting LinkedIn carousels about morning routines. He has a newsletter now. It has 200 subscribers. He calls himself a thought leader. The friend who told you your startup idea was “too risky” in 2019 just got laid off for the third time. Different company, same restructuring story. He’s updating his resume again, adding words like “cross-functional leadership” to describe what was essentially attending meetings that could have been emails. He’ll find another job. He’ll post about being “excited to announce.” He’ll get laid off again in two years. This is just his life now, and he still thinks he made the smart choice. The aunt who asked “but beta, what about stability?” at every family dinner for fifteen years. She’s fifty-seven now. Thirty years of government service. Pension doesn’t cover her diabetes medication. She’s moving in with her son, who is resentful in a vague, diffused, miserable way. She did everything right. She followed every rule. She’s still confused about how she ended up here. The cousin who married “well” at 24 has good family, good job, good salary. She is forty-one. Still in the marriage. Still in the job. Both are “fine.” She says “fine” a lot. She has a nice apartment and a husband she talks to about groceries and a job that pays for vacations she spends thinking about work. Last Diwali she looked at old photos of herself from college and said “I used to be fun” and then laughed like it was a joke. It wasn’t a joke. Everyone who gave you “practical” advice was just asking you to make the same scared decisions they did so they’d feel less alone. “Be realistic” means “be as small as me.” “That’s not how things work” means “I never tested if things could work differently.” “You’ll understand when you’re older” means “I hope age exhausts you into settling like it exhausted me.” The safe path isn’t safe. I know people who did everything right—good degree, good job, good EMI-to-income ratio and they’re still one reorg away from panic. They’re still checking their email on Sunday nights with that specific sense of foreboding stifling their breath. They’re still performing gratitude for jobs that would replace them in two weeks. Companies aren’t loyal because they’re not even alive. They’re legal structures. You’re a line item. The free snacks and the team offsites and the “we’re a family” emails were never about you. I used to work at a startup that gave us unlimited leave and a meditation room. They laid off forty people over a Zoom call. The meditation room is a storage closet now. I’m not saying quit your job tomorrow. I’m not saying burn it all down. I’m saying stop pretending the job is safety. Stop pretending the salary is a wall between you and disaster. The only actual security is the stuff you build yourself. Skills that are yours, relationships that don’t exist on a company Slack, money you didn’t let lifestyle inflation eat, some proof that you can figure things out if you have to. Everything else is just rent. And the landlord can always decide not to renew. What will you do when that happens?
