Flying Within

Part One

That morning it was raining when I entered the office building. I got off the elevator on the twelfth floor, met some familiar faces and smiled to them. I was greeted back. I walked through a corridor until I got to a door: “Jake Sailor—Marketing Director.” I opened the door to enter a medium-size office with a view of the city’s financial and business district. Elegant, stylish and warm was the environment where I had worked for three years. I looked at the desk. Some reports waiting to be written before the end of the week, and it was Thursday. I glanced at them aloof. I felt I really had little to do with all that. I turned the chair to face the window, ignored the papers and sat down thoughtfully looking at the view. It had stopped raining and the sun was coming out. I heard a voice inside:

“What do you feel, Jake?”

I knew what I felt.

“Please Jenny, don’t pass me any calls.”

“Okay Jake,” answered the kind voice of my assistant on the phone.

I needed time for myself before my next move. I thought about my life. For a while I had been having the uneasy feeling that I was in the wrong place, and trying to work in that frame of mind was becoming very difficult. I had truly the best position any marketing professional could dream of... “I have met the most wonderful mix of people, I have a dream salary, I own a beautiful house in the best residential area of town... So what?” I said to myself, “what’s so great about it if there is nothing else?” And I wasn’t thinking about a good relationship. I had that too. Deborah was a really attractive and intelligent woman. She ran one of the best-known advertising agencies in the city and had some of the most prestigious clients in her portfolio.

It was something else.

I was feeling tired of advertising campaigns and international business meetings, getting prime advertising positions in the trade magazines and television, creating marketing plans that eventually had to be changed, thinking up strategies to take greater slices of the market... In another frame of mind I would have considered it “very nice” but at that time of my life, I always asked myself at the end of the day whether I was making a positive contribution to people’s lives. The answer was always: “No.” The truth was that my work served the only purpose of furthering the enrichment of the company and its shareholders, apart from giving me a “good life.” Not really the way I wanted to spend my time. Not anymore. I had to dedicate more time to myself, to my self-development as a human being and from there, make a valuable contribution to the world.

“Jenny?”

“Yes, Jake?”

“Please find George and Mark and tell them I have to see them

this afternoon urgently in a private meeting.”

“What time?”

“See if they can at five. In the conference room.”

“Okay. I’ll get back to you.”

I was going to do it. That same day I was going to quit my job. I saw it as clearly as daylight: I didn’t want to work there anymore. Mark was the managing director and George the president of the company. I knew I was going to encounter resistance, especially from George; big companies don’t like to change successful executives. Five in the afternoon arrived, and I was waiting for Mark and George in the conference room. I was looking out of the window enjoying the wonderful view from the sixteenth floor of the corporate building. The door opened. The two men entered the room. I looked at them and smiled.