20XX — A New Odyssey

This reflection began as my first post of 2010, triggered by an intense debate with a person who had followed me everywhere, questioned every decision I had made and refused to leave even when politely ignored.

Myself.

The question was deceptively simple: What should be my odyssey for the new year?

Until then, I had treated New Year resolutions with the solemnity they deserved. Every January, I would make a fresh list of promises. By February, most of them had quietly entered the archives, alongside unused gym memberships, unread books and noble intentions to stop arguing with unreasonable people.

The resolutions were always sincere.

• Exercise more.
• Eat less.
• Read regularly.
• Save money.
• Control anger.
• Become organised.
• Avoid negative people.

The last resolution was especially difficult because it required resigning from society.

As I entered my forties, however, the resolutions began to sound more respectable. I was no longer interested merely in losing weight. I wanted to lose confusion. I wanted to understand what I was doing with my life, besides attending meetings, paying bills and pretending to enjoy conversations about property prices.

What should I consciously work towards?

Increasing my income was desirable. Having more excitement in my work routine would help. Fewer political adversaries in the workplace would certainly improve digestion. But these hardly qualified as an odyssey. They were basic maintenance requirements for surviving modern civilisation.

So where should the journey take me?

Towards more challenging initiatives? Greater professional influence? A larger home? A more impressive designation? A smaller waist displayed inside a more expensive suit?

Or should it take me somewhere far more dangerous? Inward.

A Civilisation That Cannot Stop Advising Itself

We are deeply concerned about what is happening in the world. There is confusion, conflict and anxiety everywhere. People appear to have lost direction, although almost everyone possesses a map for everybody else.

We search for solutions in religions, political ideologies, ancient traditions, leadership books and motivational speeches. Some look to the Bible, the Quran or the Bhagavad Gita. Some look to Marx. Some look to market capitalism. Others look to people who have read half a book on neuroscience and now conduct workshops on rewiring the human brain.

Every belief system claims to offer certainty. Every certainty produces another group that is equally certain of the opposite.

We now have more knowledge than any previous generation, but appear increasingly incapable of knowing what matters. There are millions of books, podcasts, online courses, expert interviews and inspirational videos telling us how to live.

This is fortunate because, without them, we might accidentally examine our own lives.

Whenever disorder increases, we blame its visible symptoms. We blame population, politicians, corruption, education, religion, capitalism, the media, technology, declining morality, poor leadership and occasionally the weather.

In business, the diagnosis is equally sophisticated. Sales are declining, so management changes the reporting format. Employees are exhausted, so Human Resources organises a wellness webinar. Customers are leaving, so the marketing team redesigns the logo. The workplace is toxic, so everyone is given access to a meditation application.

The organisation continues to set fire to its people but now offers them guided breathing while they burn.

We are remarkably skilled at discussing the smoke while protecting the machinery that produces it.

The Algorithm Knows You Better

Have we become too dependent on authority?

Not only the old authority of religious leaders, political figures, books and traditions, but a newer and more intimate authority: the algorithm.

In the past, newspapers told us what to think. Television told us what to fear. Advertisements told us what to desire. Today, the phone performs all three functions before we have left the bed.

Social media has converted human insecurity into one of the world’s most scalable business models. It studies our loneliness, envy, vanity, anger and fear, then serves each emotion back to us as personalised content. We call this engagement.

The platform does not care whether we are informed, peaceful or psychologically healthy. It cares whether we continue scrolling. Outrage is useful because calm people eventually put their phones down.

Every morning, we enter a digital marketplace where other people’s happiness is polished, filtered and presented for comparison. Someone is travelling while we are working. Someone has been promoted while we are preparing another presentation. Someone has transformed their body, launched a company, found inner peace and cooked an elegant breakfast—all before 7:30 a.m.

We know these images are edited. We know the smiles are selected, the failures omitted and the wisdom often copied. Yet the nervous system does not read the disclaimer.

Slowly, we begin living for an invisible audience. We no longer eat a meal; we create content. We no longer travel; we document proof of travel. We no longer experience joy; we publish evidence that joy occurred. Even grief must now be attractively composed, ideally with tasteful lighting and an appropriate quotation.

The modern individual is no longer merely living a life. He is managing a brand. And the brand must remain active, positive, relevant and consistently employable.

The Corporation as Competitive Theatre

Corporate life has perfected the same machinery of comparison.

Organisations speak warmly about collaboration while designing systems in which colleagues compete for ratings, promotions, bonuses, visibility and proximity to power.

We are told to work as one team and then ranked against one another. We are encouraged to be authentic, but not so authentic that our manager becomes uncomfortable. We are asked to speak truth to power, preferably after power has approved the wording.

Performance reviews have transformed human contribution into a ritual of numerical fiction. An employee’s year of labour, frustration, compromise, creativity and exhaustion is compressed into a rating selected from a drop-down menu. The rating then determines whether the individual is “exceeding expectations,” “meeting expectations” or has committed the unforgivable crime of being average in an organisation where everyone’s presentation claims excellence.

Managers must differentiate performance because the system requires differentiation. So people who worked together all year are separated into categories, like produce in a supermarket.

• Premium talent.
• Reliable talent.
• Emerging talent.
• Talent that should begin emerging elsewhere.

Meanwhile, leadership celebrates the organisation’s culture in glossy reports, while employees exchange private survival tips on messaging groups.

Corporate competition rarely produces only excellence. It also produces theatre. People learn to appear busy, sound strategic and attach themselves to successful initiatives at the appropriate moment. Failures become collective. Success becomes biographical.

A colleague may smile at your presentation, congratulate you on your insight and spend the afternoon explaining to senior management why the idea was originally his. This is not dishonesty. It is stakeholder management.

The Self-Improvement Industrial Complex

Into this anxiety steps the enormous commercial industry of self-improvement.

It begins with a disturbing but profitable message:

You are not enough.

• You are not productive enough.
• Not confident enough.
• Not wealthy enough.
• Not disciplined enough.
• Not mindful enough.
• Not influential enough.
• Not sufficiently grateful for being told that you are not enough.

Fortunately, there is a solution.

• A book.
• A webinar.
• A certification.
• A leadership retreat.
• A premium coaching package.

A morning routine practised by a billionaire who employs hundreds of people to solve the problems that disturb your morning routine.

The industry first creates dissatisfaction and then sells relief in instalments.

You are advised to wake at five, exercise, meditate, journal, visualise, hydrate, read fifty pages, study a new skill and review your financial goals before sunrise. By breakfast, you are already exhausted by your journey towards becoming a superior human being.

Even spirituality has been commercialised. Silence now requires a subscription. Mindfulness arrives through notifications. Ancient wisdom is repackaged into short videos by people standing beside rented luxury cars.

The ego has learned to meditate without surrendering any of its ambitions. It now wishes to become the calmest, healthiest and most enlightened person in the boardroom.

Self-improvement was once about understanding oneself. It has increasingly become another competitive project: a continuous renovation of the personality for greater market value. We do not ask, “Who am I?” We ask, “How can I make myself more impressive?”

Conditioning with Better Packaging

From birth, the brain is conditioned by family, religion, education, nationality, advertising and social expectations.

We are told what success looks like long before we understand what contentment feels like.

Children compare marks. Parents compare children. Employees compare salaries. Executives compare titles. Businesses compare market share. Social-media users compare lives.

Retail offers a perfect view of this conditioning.

A customer walks into a store believing he needs a shirt. But soon the decision involves the brand, fit, logo, social setting, office hierarchy and imagined opinion of people who may not even notice him.

He is not buying fabric alone. He is buying permission to feel acceptable. The luxury label promises status. The fitness tracker promises discipline. The management degree promises authority. The expensive phone promises relevance.

Business does not merely sell products. It sells temporary relief from inadequacy. And because the relief is temporary, the customer returns.

“So What?” Is Not Enough

While considering my New Year resolution, I argued with myself.

Your colleagues are financially better off than you.

So what?

They travel more.

So what?

They own larger homes and receive greater rewards.

So what?

Some colleagues dislike you. Some create obstacles because they feel threatened. Some have converted office politics into a highly specialised profession.

So what?

The phrase can be liberating. It interrupts comparison. It reminds us that another person’s success is not automatically our failure.

But “so what?” can also become an elegant form of surrender.

Therefore, another question is necessary:

What next?

Someone earns more than you. What next? Learn, improve or reconsider what enough means.

Someone receives the promotion. What next? Examine your disappointment before converting it into permanent bitterness.

A competitor opens a newer retail store. What next? Improve your merchandise, service and customer experience instead of conducting daily research into why the competitor does not deserve success.

A customer compares your price with an online marketplace. What next? Explain value honestly. Adapt intelligently. Do not deliver a lecture on loyalty to a person who only asked for a discount.

“So what?” breaks the emotional chain. “What next?” demands conscious action.

The Darker Resolution

Comparison promises progress but often delivers permanent conflict.

Today, I envy someone. Tomorrow, someone envies me. Today, I am the target of office politics. Tomorrow, another person takes my place.

The names change. The machinery remains. So who is the loser?

Me? or Them? Or all of us, trapped in a system that converts insecurity into productivity, loneliness into engagement and dissatisfaction into revenue?

Perhaps the real resolution is not to become more successful within this machinery, but to understand what the machinery is doing to us.

To notice when ambition becomes fear. When confidence becomes performance. When visibility becomes existence. When productivity becomes self-worth. When professional networking becomes organised neediness. When personal branding replaces personality. When “continuous improvement” becomes the inability to accept oneself for even five uninterrupted minutes.

This does not require abandoning business, ambition or technology. It requires using them without allowing them to colonise the mind.

Build enterprises. Serve customers. Earn money. Create value. Pursue excellence. But do not surrender your inner life to the marketplace.

A new year will not save us. Midnight possesses no spiritual authority. The calendar changes because it has been programmed to do so.

Human evolution is less punctual. The real odyssey begins when we stop asking only:

What should I achieve this year? And ask instead: Who has taught me to desire these achievements—and who profits from my dissatisfaction?

This article offers no concrete answers. Concrete answers are the most heavily marketed products of our age. It offers only an uncomfortable possibility: that the life we are struggling to improve may not be entirely our own.

Welcome, 20XX.

May you gain what you genuinely need, lose what was never truly yours and occasionally disappear long enough for the algorithm to become concerned.