From burnout to burning

The drill goes like this. You go to school and read dead authors. Fill your head with theories and listen to people tell you what's wrong with the world. (They never tell you though how to make things right.) Then you graduate and “make the grade”. You join the rat race and once you graduate from being a rat, people tell you that you are good once you've entered the “dog eats dog” club. You work 70 hours a week. You have a panic suit in your office. You conduct meetings in cars and Sundays find you airborne. You find yourself living in a suitcase and on a constant diet of takeaways. You get phone calls at 2AM with a conversation that starts with, “At paragraph 3, page 25” and feels that it is abnormally normal. You get sick when you find yourself with a one-week holiday. You get stressed trying to relax. It has been a while since you have been invited by your friends to go out since they are all assuming that you are unavailable. Your Labrador barks at you when you get home. Your Mom complains she hardly sees you. The only contract you've ever entered with the opposite sex was when you signed a lease with your landlord. You have become the favorite target for insurance agents. To top it all off, your doctor just said that you are a candidate for quarter life burnout. So is this the kind of life you want? I guess that when the going gets tough, the Tough needs to re-examine her priorities, huh? That is what I did. At the end of that introspection tunnel is clarity. I needed a sense of purpose. And “bang!” just like that it hit me. I was holding on too much to security and to my comfort zones that I started swimming close to shore. I needed to get out there. Do something right for a change. Do something I believed in. I packed my utilitarian bag of three jeans, two sneakers and around 7 t-shirts , signed up to VSO and asked to be assigned to an organization where I can, hopefully, make a critical contribution. And it led me here... an activist in South Africa, working in Alexandra, one of the most disadvantaged (and yet wonderful) townships in Johannesburg. Each day is an adventure. Working with the grassroots on the eradication of gender based violence , I am overwhelmed by the inspiring stories of these brave men and women... Surviving on just the barest minimum of necessities, it is ironic that here I find myself burning and not feeling burnout.