Journey to Joy After Getting Fired

A friend of mine was recently let go from her high profile corporate job that she had invested much of her life in. I’ll call her Kim.

I had worked with Kim closely until I was 47, when I decided to let go of my fabulous corporate career and all that comes with it. I didn’t want to make this job my life.

There’s no doubt the years I put in felt fulfilling at the time. And I was fortunate to be able to balance family and professional life (most of the time), because of wonderful pre-arrangements I had negotiated. This was in the days before working from home was a thing. And I was also fortunate to come and go as I pleased, based of course around meetings and other seemingly important things. Prioritizing my family always came first for me, regardless of the losses incurred.

Still, I did spend late nights at the office once or twice a week. It was a quiet time to concentrate on things outside of meetings and people and decisions and problems.

Around 8:00 pm or so Maria would arrive to clean our offices. She spoke very little English, so with my grammatically inaccurate Spanish put to good use, we’d chat on these evenings.

As we got to know each other she revealed that she was from Ecuador and had come to Canada alone, without her husband or children to build a better life for them. Her kids, like mine were in their teen years. The plan was they’d join her later. She missed them terribly.

Late one night after a particularly deep conversation, Maria’s questions rang in my head. “Do you miss your children when you work so late? Who looks after them?

I explained that they were in good hands, home with their father. and of course I missed them, but…

The office lights dimmed as they did every evening, leaving the familiar soft glow of my desk lamp comfortably burning. I rolled my chair over to the huge glass windows of this pristine office tower to peer out at the darkness.

As I watched the city lights around me, the streets buzzed with late evening activity. Cars looked like play toys and people moved among the twinkling lights, rushing to the subway, or hailing a cab, coat collars pulled up over ears to keep the wintry breeze at bay.

I could only see, not hear all that was happening. It was like being suspended in time, while everything else moved around you. Life carrying on in its familiar fashion, so much going unnoticed.

Yes, I missed my children, and what else was I missing in them? What had I left unnoticed? What came after the but…?

I rationalized and placated myself by reminding myself that I had been there for 99 percent of their events and happenings. I’d volunteered on various trips and committees so often some people thought I was a stay at home mother. Yet, here this evening, as I looked out the window I wondered what else I was missing.

The but was that I felt I had to do this for financial gain, a better life for my kids, my own ambitious goals, and personal purpose.

My dad had died just a couple of months prior and I was still struggling with the guilt of having to go into the office the very next day. I felt I had to because there was an important meeting scheduled with people coming in from overseas and nobody could play my part. At least that’s how I felt at the time. And though I was inflated by the sensation of indispensability, and a sense of integrity that I was meeting my responsibilities while keeping my feelings invisible, there was also a large dose of chagrin involved, for not having the time to process things as I should and needed to. The treadmill was set on high speed and I sped along.

It was then that the seed of doubt, that had always existed in me, began to grow more profusely. Though I was always comfortable in the corporate sphere, it often felt like a facade. I always knew that there was much more behind the varnish. Something unidentifiable that I was missing. Something that would reveal itself if I turned the treadmill off and stepped away from it.

And I did. Several months later I handed in my resignation, and a couple of months after that I closed my office door behind me for the last time. As I passed through the beautiful reception lobby of our offices, I saw Maria’s familiar cart. I left an envelope on it. I hope she found it and it changed her life, as her words changed mine.

This week I chatted by text with Kim, she told me I’d made a good decision in leaving all those years ago. I agreed, and I told her, that this decision that has been made for her now has the same weight of goodness attached, because she gets to decide what she’ll do with it. Once she moves beyond the sting of rejection, and reaffirms her identity, she will find her joy too.

Though I have no regrets for having lived that life, I am grateful for choosing to leave it. Stepping off the treadmill and peeling back the varnish is the first step in the journey to joy.

And in the end it’s all about what we choose to make of the circumstances we find ourselves in, whether by choice or chance.

Maria, Kim, and I, all in different circumstances, on different paths, with different opportunities to the same destination, to meet joy, depending on the choices we made.

I’ll leave you with this fabulous quote from a fellow blogging friend, Susan Hart, in her latest blog post, Journey.

“You are the captain of your destiny, but only if you choose to be.”

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This is the Journey to Joy series. Write a post, like a gratitude journal about something you’ve experienced on this journey to joy. Ping back or link your post in comments by next Friday, and I’ll share it in my next Journey to Joy post. Let’s share the joy in this journey!