So you want a better job?

So you want a new job? Because it is more lucrative? Better benefits? Better work-life balance? Well, a choice between continuing to live your life as it is now, and dying to move on to a new place and the possibility of a new, better (after)life is not much different from choosing to continue in your current job and moving on to a new one. They are, in fact, eerily similar.

You don't believe me, do you? I understand. Even thinking about death can be scary. But in the interest of keeping this though-exercise as non-morbid as possible, let's assume that death is painless, easy, and instantaneous. Let's also say that you possess the ability to glimpse into the new life and see how it is expected to be. And by this I mean something like a YouTube recruitment video from Google, and not a pastor's interpretation of a religious book. These two assumptions take away the uncertainty and pain out of dying. Now you know where you are going, and you also know it doesn't have to hurt. What do you think now?

•   Both moves involve breaking existing ties. 

◦                  Once you move to a new job, you never meet up with your ex-colleagues.  Once you die, obviously (and hopefully) you don't come back to visit them either. 

◦                  You might bump into some of your ex-colleagues at your new job, when they also decide to make the transition. Or you might meet them in heaven or hell when they make the transition.

•   Both are permanent. 

◦                  Coming back to an old job is almost as rare and miraculous as coming back from the dead. 

◦                  Returning back to your old job in a relatively small time frame after leaving is more frequent, just like the possibility of reviving someone whose heart just stopped is a little bit higher than someone who died a while ago.

•   Both can mean making adjustments to your current lifestyle, and learning new tricks and skills. Or not. It completely depends on where you go, in both cases, and what you need to survive and thrive there.

•   You don't exactly know what you are getting into, sometimes in spite of lots of research. Your new job might turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you, or the worst. You might be in heaven, or you might be in hell - well, in one case, literally and in the other, figuratively.

•   How well you do at the new place depends a lot on your actions in the previous place. If you worked hard in your previous job, displayed great work ethics, and leaned a lot of skills and new tricks, you will be able to get a good job at a big company and will do very well. All the hard work you put in at your previous (not so great) job will now reap dividends. If you have lived a noble, righteous, virtuous life, most religions promise you a great after-life. And the opposite is true too. It is called Karma.

Do you agree now? I hope so. If you still harbor some doubts, let me remind you gently that people do get laid off and fired from their jobs too, mostly against their wishes, and sometimes even unfairly when they have done nothing to deserve it.