Somewhere between a resignation email and an exit note, the modern professional has started confusing convenience with escape. A resignation needs planning – notice periods, backup offers, savings, and carefully worded gratitude.

An exit from life? Just a moment of unbearable silence.

Last week, in Gurgaon, an advertising professional chose the latter. A 13th-floor drop, they say, is instant. Clean. Efficient. Almost like meeting a deadline. And like most deadlines, it was met, acknowledged… and moved past. We read it. We pause. We sigh. And then we scroll. Because there’s always another meeting waiting.

We live in a time where dashboards track productivity, but no one tracks the slow erosion of the human spirit. Where burnout is worn like a badge, and survival is rebranded as success. The job market is unstable, the stock market is anxious, and the cost of existing has quietly become a luxury.

We were told to build a life. Instead, we built liabilities.

EMIs that outlive motivation. Basic lifestyles that outgrow salaries. Expectations that quietly suffocate joy. And somewhere in between, we forgot to ask – at what cost?

Quitting a job today feels like jumping without a safety net. Quitting life, disturbingly, is starting to look like the only net left.

That’s the satire. And that’s the tragedy.

Because the real crisis isn’t just economic. It’s emotional. It’s the normalisation of silent suffering. It’s how casually we say “I’m tired” when what we really mean is “I’m not okay.” It’s how we’ve learned to function, perform, and deliver – while quietly falling apart.

We’ve normalised instability so deeply that anxiety now comes with a salary slip. Layoffs are calendar events. Increments are folklore. And every month becomes a quiet negotiation – between rent and rest, between dignity and dependency, between holding on and letting go.

We’ve optimised everything except our capacity to feel.

And so, patience doesn’t snap dramatically. It fades. Slowly… like a battery that never quite charges back to 100%.

This isn’t about weakness. It’s about weight. The weight of showing up when you have nothing left to give. The weight of pretending things are fine when they are anything but. The weight of a world that keeps asking for more, without ever asking how you are.

If quitting feels like an option, maybe the system – not the person – is what needs rethinking. Maybe the real question isn’t why people are giving up, but why staying has started to feel this hard. Maybe the real rebellion is not in walking away from life, but in choosing to stay differently. To pause without guilt. To ask for help without shame. To redefine success beyond survival.

Because no job, no market, no version of success should cost you your existence. And maybe, just maybe, the bravest thing today isn’t quitting anything at all.

It’s staying. And saying – this isn’t working anymore.
And meaning it.