Dear The Tank,
I work in private wealth management. I’m a managing director at my firm, where I easily make a double-figure multiple of the median American household income. I should feel good, right? I’m on top of the pyramid, right?
But my job takes a lot out of me. First of all, it’s always long hours. In fact, it’s endless hours, since if there ever comes a time that they can’t reach you, you’re fucked. Someone else will take the credit. Someone else will get your deal. And being at the top of the pyramid means there’s a long way to fall.
I wonder if there’s a life outside this rat race. Sometimes I fantasize about having more time with my wife and kids. Maybe I could start a little pet store or something like that. I liked animals when I was a kid.
Should I take the plunge?
—Rat Racer in Manhattan
Dear Rat Racer,
Yes.
When faced with the question, should I take the plunge? we always answer yes. It is simply a policy here at The Tank.
However, in your case, we are confident we are right. Given how far you’ve climbed up your pyramid, you must be a couple decades out of school. That’s a good fraction of your adult life you’ve now spent in the rat race that you obviously detest. Doing what your soul protests against can only lead to suffering and the eventual destruction of your personhood. The chains of obligation and servitude will always chafe. Fortunately, you do have time left, and your fantasies of having more time with your family and of starting a pet store are clearly messages from the better self you long to be.
You can be that better self by pursuing those fantasies. That is what you must do.
Be aware that your journey will not end with this move. You will likely become more attuned to the call of your better self, and if you listen, it will lead you to miraculous places. On day one, after you send your official go-fuck-yourself-and-the-horse-you-rode-in-on email and leave an unflushed stinker in the toilet on your way out of the office, you’ll enjoy the first fifteen or twenty minutes with your kids, perhaps at a park, feeling the effect actual sunlight has on your skin. But then you’ll start to notice that you can only push a swing and enjoy your son’s giggles so many times. You’ll start looking for a little action. Then you’ll catch a glimpse of the odds for the second at the Raceway in a paper someone left on one of the benches. You’ll imagine yourself in the stands, cheering your horse down the straightaway, and now you have to go live that dream. This is important for you. Learn to follow the call!
You’ll make it home that night, after wandering through neon forests of slots, blackjack, and poker to find your way to the Sky Bar, where they have a special every night of the week. The next morning your wife will leave for her yoga class, and you’ll be left home with the younger kids and their regular babysitter, a college student who works three mornings a week at your house. You’ll notice that she has buttocks as smooth and round as the outline of a planet. Again, you’ll hear that message from your better self, like music pouring down from the celestial spheres, and it’s your obligation to follow it.
After you’ve been in the babysitter’s dorm room for an hour or two, you’ll notice the picture of her sister on a terrace in Spain or Italy, you think. The sister is a little taller than the sitter, with a slightly larger bosom, it looks like. A few questions will elicit her name, Janet, and the fact that she lives in Turin. God, can’t you just see yourself, sipping a Barolo, or maybe a Moscato, on a balcony, with the Via Roma sweeping underneath you? Same-day plane tickets are expensive, but that’s no problem for you.
Janet’s bright eyes and remarkable carriage will delight you for a couple days. But left on your own for a few minutes at one of those outdoor cafés, you’ll notice a group of young people packing skis and backpacks into a van, and feel a twinge, a pull to join them.
One of them will tell you that they’re heading into the high Alps to paraglide off snowy cliffs. The moment you hear this, you’ll be transfixed with a vision so beautiful, cold, and bright of yourself floating above the puny world immune to care. You’ll have to pursue that, too. I only recommend you take time to check all the straps on your chute.
—The Tank
Read more advice so bad it’s good from The Tank.
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The Tank is inspired by Gracious Living Without Servants, the new novel by Wall Street Journal writer Brenda Cronin. Juliet, the heroine of that novel, makes all kinds of bad choices that end up making life way more interesting. Read the first chapter.
