New Traditionalist

Lead generation is the key to any successful business.  Even the best product or service is worthless if you can’t get it in front of potential buyers. Lead generation is all about connecting potential buyers with the services they need.

This first post in our series on how to make money online will focus on how you can use a lead generation model to start your own internet-based business.  Although the term “lead generation” can also refer to connecting potential buyers with products, our focus in this post is on services.  We will cover products in future sections on ecommerce and affiliate marketing.

I believe that lead generation is a great first-tier strategy for breaking out of the traditional employment system.  You can start your own lead-generating website without leaving your current job.  This can allow you to build up the business you will need to support yourself before you kiss the 9-to-5 goodbye.

Driving Leads to Your Own Business

Many people start lead generation websites to support their own business launch.  For example, someone who wants to start a business consulting firm might develop a website designed to meet the needs of his potential client base (small business owners).  In theory, the basic steps required to start your own web-based business are simple:

1. Define or develop a skill that people are willing to pay for;
2. Develop a website that promotes that skill;
3. Promote that website using search engine optimization or other inbound marketing tools.

In practice, though, it isn’t always this easy.  The first step is often the hardest.  How do you pick a skill to base your business upon?  Of course, there isn’t any one-size-fits-all answer.  Each person will need to choose based on their expertise and interests.

Some people will tell you to build your business around your passion. The rationale is that you will be more likely to stick with something if you have a genuine interest in it.  This may be true in some cases, but I don’t recommend choosing a business based on your passion alone.  Here’s why:

1. A business that starts out as a passion can become a drudgery just as quickly as any other.  Just because you start out with a passion for baking doesn’t mean that you will still be wild about baking after having been in the industry for a year.
2. Most people’s passions aren’t as marketable as their skills.  It may be that building a business based on your skill will free up your time to focus on your passions.

While you shouldn’t hate what you do for a living (after all, you are trying to move into a more meaningful life), I recommend that you be passionate about your passions.  Be practical about your business.

There is a saying in the writing world: Write what you know.  I recommend applying that same philosophy to your new business. Build a business on the area where you can best leverage your existing expertise.  Make a list of the things that you are good at.  If you are a police officer, think about private investigations. If you are a high school basketball coach, think about private coaching clinics or instructional videos.  You get the picture. Once you have that list, run a few searches to see if there are others that are selling similar services online.  If so, you may have found your niche.

If you don’t have marketable skills, or if your skills are in an area that you dislike, you will need to develop them.  Find industry-specific resources (like www.lynda.com) and develop your skill set.  You don’t need to wait until you have the skills before you start your website.  In fact, you may be able to start a website teaching others what you are learning.  Chances are there are other people looking for information on the same topic.

Note:  Don’t forget about other social media tools.  LinkedIn in particular can be a great resource for locating groups of potential clients and networking with thought leaders in your chosen field.

Driving Leads to Third-Party Businesses

If you do a good job of capturing leads, you may be able to sell those leads to other service providers.  The advantage of this model is that you don’t need the substantive expertise needed to actually provide the service.  You provide the leads, and a third-party service provider does the rest of the work.

I first stumbled into this business model when working for a family business in the early 2000s.  The business paid a third-party service provider for a stream of qualified leads – sometimes as much as several thousand dollars per lead.  The lead generation company was really good at getting targeted content in front of people who were looking for it.  When these people contacted the company, the company would collect some basic information online and forward it to our family business.  We did all the work in providing the service, but they shared in the profit for bringing the lead.

To really understand this business model, you must realize that you aren’t getting paid for nothing.  Lead generation for other businesses is all about core competencies.  The service provider’s core competency is providing the service to the end user.  Your core competency is knowing how to use the internet to generate leads.  This ability to bring in business is the value that you add to the service provider.  If you don’t have this skill, you will need to develop it.

Check out this video to see how to entrepreneurs were able to start a multi-million dollar company using a third-party lead generation model (providing leads to schools):

Knowing how to generate leads of this nature requires a close familiarity with the industry and an understanding of what motivates customers.  But people who take the time to develop this expertise can do well with a lead generation model.

For several years now, my income has been tied to the internet.  I believe that the internet offers unprecedented opportunities to earn a good living without settling for the traditional job-dependent employment system.

Because my income is so closely tied to my ability to connect with potential customers online, I devote most of my time to studying how to do this better.  I read voraciously. I apply what I read to various test sites that I set up to see what works and what doesn’t (this can be done for very little money).  This gives me the insights on how to be a better internet marketer.

If you are in the internet marketing world for long, though, you will find tons of blogs, e-books, and video courses that promise quick riches for little effort (if you know the secret handshake).  These advertisements are usually filled with references to the type of life you can live if you follow their system.  If you are willing to part with your hard-earned cash, these shysters promise to teach you how to earn six-figure income for an hour or two of work per week, date any girl that you want, and drive the hottest new sport car.

Most of the men that I know aren’t pursuing some sophomoric fantasy of fast cars and loose women.  Most of them aren’t interested in the “dot com lifestyle” or branding themselves as a media mogul. They aren’t looking for a quick buck for no effort.  They just want more flexibility in their schedule, more interaction with their families, and more time for spiritual development.  They want to break out of jobs that they hate into a more meaningful life.

With all of the scam artists out there, I am almost embarrassed to talk about how I make money online.  But since this topic comes up a lot in conversation, I know that people are looking for straightforward information on how this works.

This post will be the first in a series on how to make money online, targeted to regular guys who are looking for online business models to replace or supplement the income they earn from their current job.  I plan to describe some of the popular models and talk about basic internet marketing techniques.  I hope to use some of my case studies to illustrate more advanced tactics.

Before I get started, I want to mention a few overarching principles that I believe are important for anyone who is thinking about making money online:

• Be prepared for hard work.  Don’t think that setting up a WordPress site and posting some great content will be enough to reach your goals. It won’t.  It will take months of learning and applying just to get to the place where you are prepared to start earning money online.  
• Be patient.  Success comes to those who stick with it.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve put time and effort into a project, only to be frustrated when I didn’t see results after a month or two.  But, assuming that the model is sound, success does eventually come.  Be committed to sticking with it in the lean months. 
• Offer something of value.  Many of the “make money online” guys are just selling a dream.  They don’t offer anything of value.  To succeed online, you need to have a value proposition—something that people will pay you for.  This could be a service you provide, a product you sell, or it could be your writing itself.  Whatever it is, you need to identify it up front and be sure that is something that people will truly benefit from.
• Aim for contentment.  Your goal should be to live a more meaningful life, not to be rich.  There are plenty of self-employed people (both on and offline) who are miserable in spite of their flexible schedule.  They have time to spend with their families, but instead they spend it trying to make an extra dollar that they don’t really need.  Keep your head on straight.

I have been able to use internet business models to escape the 9 to 5, and I’m getting close to my goal of being able to work from anywhere, without being tied to a particular location (as I write this, I haven’t been to a physical office in two weeks).  I believe this is an achievable goal for most people.  I hope to show you how to get there.

I wrote last week about reclaiming the historic definition of work.  We no longer need think of “work” as having to do with slavish dependence on the modern employment system.  Work is about adding value to society and profiting from that value.

Most people don’t think of work in this way.  Their entire life experience has taught them to accept dependence on the employment system as the only reality.  But those who are able to overcome this conditioning find a whole new world waiting for them.  The internet has created an almost limitless number of opportunities to provide needed goods and services.  In this internet economy, those with eyes to see and the courage to act can break away from the traditional employment system.

This new phase of our evolution as a society is still being defined.  But it is clear is that success in the internet economy depends on how well a person can use information to his or her advantage.  People who can understand the economy can profit from it.   Most people who do well in this economy share a single trait: they are committed to learning.

I spend a good part of each day just learning.  I read blogs, books, and other writings by people who have travelled the road before me.  I study online business models, both by reading about them and by reverse engineering websites of people who seem to be doing well online.  I apply what I learn to my business models.  I keep what works and discard what doesn’t.  It is a never-ending process, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  It’s part of the fun.

Note:  The type of learning that I am talking about here is more active than passive.  It is more like learning how to ride a bike than learning geometry.  Learning geometry is academic, conceptual.  It can be put to practical use, but more often than not it just stays in our head.  Learning how to ride a bike is experiential.  There isn’t much room for abstract theory.  You learn by doing.

Making money online requires an idea, then a plan, then action.  Without action, good ideas will not earn money.  There are far more people who are learning about online business models than people that are profiting from them.  Why?  Because learning doesn’t require courage and action does.

Keep doing what you’ve always done, keep getting what you’ve always gotten.

Last Sunday, an elite Ethiopian runner named Tesfaye Sendeku Alemayeh competed in the ING Miami Half Marathon.

Both the full and half marathon courses begin on Biscayne Boulevard.  The two courses mirror each other until just shy of the 13.1 mile finish line for the half marathon.  At that 12.8 mile mark, the roads split to separate the half marathon course from the full marathon course.  To the left, the finish line for the 13.1 mile half-marathon course. To the right, the remainder of the full 26.2 mile marathon course.

Alemayeh won last year’s full ING Miami Marathon.  His goal this year was to set a new course record for the half.  At the 12 mile mark, he was on track to do just that.

By the time he reached the fork in the road at the 12.8 mile mark, Alemayeh was the clear frontrunner in the race.  But as he approached the fork, he saw the full marathon vehicle bear to the right.  Alemayeh followed the lead marathon vehicle, veering from the half marathon course onto the full marathon course.

Alemayah didn’t know that he had made a wrong turn, but he did know that he was on pace to beat the course record of 01:03:46. At the hour and five minute mark, he was confused.  “I ran for 1:05 and then I looked at my watch and said, ‘Where is the finish line?’ ’’

By the time he realized his mistake, it was too late.  Kenyan James Boitt won the marathon in 01:06:41, followed up by Harbert Okuti at 01:07:29 and Franklin Tenorio at 1:09:38.  Alemayehu, who would have shattered each of these times, dropped out of the race.

Being an occasional runner myself, I know the mental fatigue that can set in toward the end of a long, strenuous run.  But I can’t imagine what it must feel like to have trained so hard, and run so well, only to take a wrong turn less than a half mile from the finish line.

But here’s the thing:  The rules of the race state that each runner is responsible for knowing the course.  At the end of the day, there isn’t anyone to blame other than Alemayah himself.

I’ve thought about this since I read it, especially a statement that Alemayeh made after the race: “I was focused on my pace.”

There is a metaphor here that is too rich to pass up.  How much time have we spent focusing on our performance without ever stepping back to be sure that we are going in the right direction?  What would it be like to get to the end of a life, only to realize that we were on the wrong course for the most crucial part of the race?

I wrote last week about the blessing of flexibility in my schedule.  I have structured my job so that I only go into the office on scheduled days of the week.  I usually work from home.  Because my kids are homeschooled, they are sometimes in my home office with me.  Even when they aren’t, I can stop what I am doing at any moment for a quick thumb wrestling match or to help my wife deal with a problem.

I have been in this environment for over a year now.  The quality of my family life, spiritual life, and health has never been better.  I don’t feel like I have arrived at my final destination, but I am really living now in a way that I haven’t in some time.  My only regret is not taking the leap sooner.

But in the past year, I have come to realize how few people really understand my lifestyle.  They assume that my education simply makes money show up in my bank account with little effort on my part.  Here’s an example: Several months ago, we had a week-long guest at our home.  During that time, I woke up at my usual time, exercised, had breakfast with my family, and went out to my home office to work for the day.  Life as usual.  But toward the end of the week, as our guest was leaving, he joked that I “hadn’t worked all week.”

Wait, what?

During that week, I had spent probably 40 hours in my home office, doing the same type of work that I did when I was in a big corporate office. The day-to-day work wasn’t much different from that of my peers who are in a more traditional employment setting. I had worked on websites, produced content, answered phone calls, worked files, and made money.  The only difference was that I did it from home, on my terms.  But for my guest, this somehow didn’t qualify as “work.”  It was too far outside of his paradigm.

Most people today have been taught by the educational and employment system to equate “work” with “working for someone else.”  Work means trading the hours of your life away to a corporate system designed to benefit those on the top.  Work is being completely dependent on an employer, living paycheck to paycheck, pinning your hopes on a future raise or a golden retirement.

But here’s the worst part:  For most people, work means settling.  People are taught to settle for what the corporate or governmental employment system offers and to accept that as the only reality.  Self-reliance isn’t even a live option for them.  They are entirely dependent on the system.  This is the modern-day equivalent of slavery.

Few voices question the work-as-job paradigm today.  In fact, if you listen to the popular media, you will learn that jobs are a cure-all.  The Republicans tell us that lower taxes will stimulate the economy by freeing up resources to create more jobs.  The Democrats tell us that big governmental spending will add much-needed jobs to the employment market.  The unspoken assumption behind every economic discussion is that jobs are the panacea of our day.

The truth is that the work-as-job paradigm is relatively modern concept.  Before the corporation was invented in the Renaissance, most people worked for themselves.  Having no traditional employment system to depend on, they were self-reliant.  They hammered iron, cobbled shoes, grew crops, milked cows, and did whatever else they could to put food on the table. For them, “work” meant “adding value to society and profiting from that value.”

This worked out fine for society as a whole, but not so much for the aristocracy.  Unlike the productive working class, most aristocrats added little value to society.  Instead, they depended entirely on what money they could extract from the working class.  So the aristocracy created the chartered monopoly—the precursor to our modern corporations.  Using chartered monopolies, the aristocracy could control the production of goods and services.  This forced many small businesses to shut down and the former small business owners to work for the chartered monopolies owned by the aristocracy.  It was during this time “work” first came to mean “job.”

Then came the Industrial Revolution, with its mechanization and automation of the production of goods.  Machine manufacturing replaced manual labor.  For the first time in history, the living standards of the common man began to grow at a sustainable rate.  But the change was not all good.  With the new assembly-line production methods, jobs became as slavish and unskilled as ever.  The worker became a replaceable cog in the machine, a machine that was still designed to benefit those on top.

Now we are in the middle of another societal shift that will eclipse all of society’s prior leaps.  The Technological Revolution has done for the provision of services what the Industrial Revolution did for the production of goods:  it decomposed the value chain.  What was once a unitary provision of a single service has been broken into a sequence of components, each with their own value add.

The decomposed value chain in the provision of services is a game-changer.  There are more ways to add value now than at any time in history, which translates into more profit opportunities than ever before.  And many of them can be done from anywhere.

People who understand this paradigm can leverage technology to break out of the job-dependent employment system into a new way of life. Now is the time to reclaim the definition of work.  Work doesn’t have to mean “having a job.”  Work is about adding value to society and profiting from that value.  Let’s sever our dependency on corporations, stop thinking in terms of jobs, and step outside the system.

I am working toward a location-independent lifestyle.  I want to be able to support my family from anywhere, without having to punch a clock at any specific place on this planet.  That is pretty much my only career goal.  Not riches, not fame, not self-fulfillment, not job security.  Just independence.

I am getting close to my goal.  I work a 40-50 hour week like most people, but I am in charge of my own schedule.  I work from home most days.  If I want to work from the beach for a few days, I can do so without missing a beat.  If I want to leave at 4:00 today to treat my wife or kids to a special afternoon, I have no one to ask or answer to.  This is truly a blessing.  If I move no closer to my goal, I have no complaints.

I was talking to a friend of mine recently about job opportunities.  When we started talking about my situation, he remarked that I am lucky to be where I am.  In a sense, he’s right.  Consider:

• If I had not been born in America, I may not have had the opportunity for upward mobility.
• If I had not been raised in modest circumstances, I would never have known the value of hard (and often thankless) work.
• If my mother had not been attentive to my homeschooling, I would not have developed the learning skills I needed to succeed in college and law school.
• If I had not known several entrepreneurs as a teenager, I might not have seen the entrepreneurial path so clearly.
• If God had not done a work in my life, I would not have been able to let go of the fear that keeps many would-be entrepreneurs frozen in hesitation.
• If Al Gore had not invented the internet, I would not have been able to structure my business as I have.

I could go on.  The point is that a million things had to fall in place for me to end up where I am.  Although I would attribute these circumstances to grace and not to luck, it is true that I have been given many opportunities in life.  No one knows this more than me.

But … in another sense, all this talk about luck is just a cop out.  My friend wants out of the dead-end job that he hates, but he accepts the job as inevitable.  In spite of the fact that he chose what to study in college and chose the career he is in, he just doesn’t believe that he has been given the opportunities that he needs to break out of the job-dependent employment system into a more meaningful life.

There is something inside my friend that tells him that there has to be a better way than trading the hours of his life away in hopes of a golden retirement.  He spends a lot of his free time planning a way out. But when it comes to choice, the decision to take the one irreversible step that will change the course of his life … he hesitates.

This is what I realize that my friend does not:  The real difference between me and my friend isn’t our circumstances, but our choices. 

I know how my friend feels because I’ve been there.  I spent years of my life frozen in hesitation.  The plan was in place, but I couldn’t make my move.  I was afraid that the timing would be off, that opportunities would be lost forever, that some unknown disaster was sure to happen.

So I did nothing.

And years of my life passed.

I grew more distant from my family (how involved can you be with just a few hours in the afternoons?).  I neglected my spiritual condition.  I lost touch with friends and formed no new friendships.  I became a cog in a machine.  I was starving in the midst of plenty.

What I finally realized—and what my friend needs to realize—is that there is no such thing as a non-choice.  Every day spent in hesitation is a day that you choose to remain where you are.  I like the way Teddy Roosevelt put it:

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.

I am nothing special, certainly not a pattern of bravery.  But I have I have had to make difficult decisions.  Like Abraham, I went out, not knowing whither I went.  I have ignored conventional wisdom by walking away from more than one good, well-paying job into an uncertain future.  I learned to face what Julien Smith calls “the flinch”—that split-second desire to pull back in fear.

There are people who really are stuck in bad jobs.  I don’t want to minimize that.  It’s easy for those of us with certain education and life opportunities to babble about choosing your own destiny without thinking about the busboy or the railroad laborer busting it for minimum wage just to pay the light bill.

But many of the people I know aren’t in that situation.  They have opportunities.  Change is possible.  But they are paralyzed by a fear that they can’t recognize. So they use the luck excuse, a straw man to blame for their situation. They deceive themselves.

Fortune favors the bold.  Take the step.  Make the choice.  If you don’t, you can be sure that it will be made for you.

I will remember 2011 as the year that I finally broke through and became a runner.  Of my 1,228 lifetime miles, 928 of them (over 75%) were logged in 2011.  This mileage, while unremarkable to serious runners, marked a turning point for me.  It was enough to cause a fundamental shift in my self-identity.  I am no longer just a guy who is trying to get in shape.  I am a runner.

I believe that this shift occurred for two reasons, one external and one internal.  The external reason was that I was able to step out of the job-dependent employment system and become fully self-employed in October of 2010.  Although I work as much now as before, I can structure my schedule around my priorities.  I don’t worry about “showing up late” or some arbitrary schedule that an employer has set for me.  I simply take one thing at a time, run as long as I need/want to, then turn my attention to the tasks of the day.

But my transition from wannabe to a runner was driven more by an internal factor, a shift in motivation that occurred somewhere along the asphalt roads near the interstate by my house.  I had come to running the way most people do, with short-term, superficial goals in mind.  I wanted to fit into a size 32 pants again.  I wanted to be able to transition from a stressful workday to a casual afternoon.  I wanted to feel better.

My first experiences with running were a matter of raw discipline.  It all came down to having the willpower to drag myself out there, turn up the iPod, and get it over with.  The act itself was an evil to be suffered in pursuit of my underlying goals.

With this mindset, consistency was difficult.  I would run for a few weeks at a time, working my way up to two or three miles, only to quit at the first excuse that seemed credible.  Then, perhaps a year or two later, I would fortify my will for another short-lived burst of effort.  So went my early running experience.

I committed to run more consistently in 2011.  Instead of trying to squeeze in a run at the end of the day, when so many other priorities were vying for my attention, I began running in the morning, before the workday began.

This was difficult at first.  My legs were stiff, my breathing was labored, and I fatigued quickly.  I had to force myself into in a steady routine.  I set my clock earlier to give my body time to wake up.  I used my Forerunner to keep an even pace and save energy for the end of the run.  I worked out my core muscles on the days between runs.  Over the course of several weeks, things became more tolerable.

Not long after I became consistent, my perspective began to shift.  Instead of obsessing with reaching the stopping point, I found myself wanting to run longer.  I would tack on a mile or two here and there, not because of any arbitrary goal that I was trying to reach, but because it just felt good.

About midway through the year, I ditched the iPod.  Now free from its mental distraction, I could fully experience the even flow of my breathing, the sunrise slowly erasing the stars, the pleasant crunch of my shoes on gravel and pitter patter of my steps on the road, the clumsiness of the young cottontails scrambling out of the roadside clearing at my approach, the ethereal hues of green on the leaves that only the morning sun can produce.

My immediate, unfiltered experience of these things added a transcendent quality to the run, turning it into spiritual as much as a physical discipline.  The best moments evoked praise to God for the simple beauty around me and made my prior indifference to it seem almost sinful.

During my runs, I began tapping into a mental calm that I didn’t know was possible.  What seemed like deep metaphysical problems turned out to be only psychological irritants.  Given some stillness of mind, they simply settled like dust to the bottom of a still pond.  Several miles into the run, I would reach a place where I was fully in the moment, free from the constant babble of my mind with its forward and backward pull.  In that space, I could experience myself and my surroundings as they are, no longer confusing them with the label my mind assigned to them or setting off an endless chain of thought reactions.

As the year went on, the physical distance that I ran was eclipsed by my progress on an interior journey that was (quite unexpectedly) unfolding within me.  Now that the year has gone, I realize that running is no longer a goal-oriented activity (like repeating scales to become a better musician) but a practice that has intrinsic value (like prayer or meditation).  My prior goals are now insignificant; the process itself is what matters.

Running reminds me that life is lived only in the present.  Aphorisms like “stop and smell the roses” have become trite but no less true.  We eat and drink; we marry and are given in marriage; our children grow up; our spouses and parents age; moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal our treasures, things that ultimately prove to be insignificant.  We place our hopes in a better future that will and can never come because it is a phantom, a false mental projection that cannot exist in the present.  All the while life’s most important moments—the simple un-events that cannot be captured in a camera—these pass unnoticed.

I pray that in 2012 I will learn to enjoy the process of life and let the goals fall by the wayside.

What shapes the trajectory of a life?

His Birth

He is placed into the system from the day that he is cut from the womb by jaded obstetrician whose only is concern is to get as rich as possible without being sued.

Having been deprived of a natural birth, he is given a few blessed seconds with his sedated mother before he is pulled away to be pricked, poked, prodded, and placed under a glow lamp.

Lying there, alone, his body twisting with innate longing for a mother’s touch, his first cries are largely ignored by an aggravated nursery worker waiting for her shift to end.

His father watches helplessly through the glass.

This is his welcome into the world.

His First Years

Daycare at three and kindergarten at four.  Then both he and his mother sob as he boards the roadside bus.  Their mutual anguish climaxes as each loses sight of the other, every cell in their once-united bodies now reverberating with the wrongness of their separation.

Then it begins to subside.

The release of the child to the system.

A painful but necessary rite of passage.

His Education

He spends most of his waking hours in the system.  His parents do what they can to salvage the evenings and weekends, but their time together is soon eroded by the constant stream of homework, soccer practice, and after-school activities.

The boy’s father feels an icy awareness trickling through in the quiet moments.  Stages pass quickly and are gone forever. Photographs are of no use; the camera only captures half-life.  The child himself is beyond what film or mind can record.  What is missed cannot be regained.  His father needs no one to explain this. But it is not in his father to consider another way.  A man works while his children grow.  Such is the natural order of things.

When the boy’s sister is born, his parents cede their roles to the system entirely.

The system teaches the boy its fundamental lesson: how to operate within the system.  What is done in harmony with the system is rewarded with stars, smiley stickers, report cards, and eventually diplomas.  What challenges the system becomes a disciplinary problem for the school and shame to his parents.

The boy learns that life is fragmented and confusing.  One hour bears little relation to another.  Math class ends, not when anything of worth has been accomplished, but when an arbitrary bell rings to send him to science class.  The tradeoff is clear: You sit down quietly and give them your hours in hope that something better awaits beyond the ringing of the next bell.

The boy, now becoming a man, is aware of a deep dissatisfaction.  He feels that there must be some seed of unrealized greatness within him, dug down deep beneath.  The bell must ring.  Something better must lie on the other side.  But he cannot fully understand these feelings.  He does all that he can do:  find his place within the system and push ever higher.  He attends college, then graduate school, trusting that the system will reward him with a well paying job.

His Career

He leaves the educational system in a state of total dependence. He has been handed his role by people more educated than him, people who themselves are a part of the system and have never been otherwise.  There is only one path for him, and it winds ever deeper into the system.

When he lands the job, he finds the same tradeoff that was required by his formal education: he trades the hours of his life to the system in hope of some future reward.  Where he once lived for the weekend, he now lives for retirement, a time when he can step outside of the system and live the life that he hopes is waiting for him.

He is well-conditioned to accept this and learns to regard the dissatisfaction inside of him as an unpleasant but universal malaise, endemic to the sons of Adam.

He marries and raises children who themselves are well-functioning members of the system.  He plays his role and gives them a life of relative financial security.  But he is unable to experience his family authentically.  Their relationships are not with each other as people but with the preformed concepts of what the other should be.  Their daily interactions become cardboard and scripted, unreal.

His dreams fade with his youth.  The line between work and life blurs beyond distinction.  So he spends his working years.

His Retirement

He nears retirement with a secure financial future but a growing fear.  His approaching retirement feels less like reward than obsoletion. His self identity is now inextricably linked with his role in the system, a system that is now discarding him.  When the day comes, he is terrified.

His Last Years

In his later years he is patronized and pushed aside, a nuisance, a burden to be born.

A life robbed of autonomy.  Every goal set for him, his life scripted in advance, his destiny shaped by unseen forces he could never understand.

The sense of loss is inescapable.  His unrealized dreams have festered inside him for so long that they are now malignant, mingling with the cancer that destroys what remains of his aged body.

Is this how man is meant to live?

You decide.