How to Sell your Soul to Corporate America

Whether you like it or not, your soul is for sale on the open market. All sorts of merchants have set up shop, offering goods in exchange for your precious soul. Most of us deal selectively, but others are happy to bargain with anyone, selling when the price is right.

The biggest vendor out there is Religion. The problem is, trading with Religion is like entering a marriage: once the ring is on, no other bidder has a shot. So, a lot of people turn to other clients, ones that offer goods beyond the spiritual.

Setting the Price

We all have different values, but there’s one that has a place reserved in every person’s heart: money. You see, spiritual wealth can’t buy you money, but money can buy you a hell of a lot of things that look like spiritual wealth.

Eventually, you’re going to have to name a price.

Those married to Religion usually name infinity, calling their decision easy. After all, marriages are meant to last forever. If instead you’ve sold shares in your soul to Family, Fun, or even Fame, you’ll surely have a few left over for the one and only buyer that pays in cold, hard cash.

Corporate America

Every trade on the open market is preceded by an up-front time investment, a trial period before you are permitted to reap the promised rewards. Prayer is a common investment, but it could be anything.

Corporate America, if you are to do business with it — and get respectable returns on your investment — demands initial capital in the form of employable skills, connections, and rich parents. What you lack in one, you can make up for in another. With the eyes of an eagle and measure of a banker, sooner or later Corporate America’s attention will fall on you.

On that day, you better look as profitable as you can muster.

Closing the Deal

Half a decade of sharpening on the grindstone of higher education is considered, to some, a worthy investment of capital. Yet, Corporate America denies many who try to enter through these narrow gates, and the cries of those who fall echo across the plains of early life, dissuading the weak at heart.

If you have resolve, however, there is a place reserved for you.

It may take years or even decades of work before the opportunity to cash anything in, quietly stripping your soul of its limited shares. If you are not fortunate, you may die before your offering is ever received. But if you are lucky, and your resolve does not falter, the day will come that Corporate America will choose to do business with you.

One Hundred Thousand Dollars

At last, your unrelenting efforts did not go unnoticed. A decade of focused study brought you your first deal, but it’s not enough for the life you hope to live.

You’ve mastered the game, and your velocity is high. You want to keep pressing on, doing what you do best, all the while knowing the market has no finish line. As your soul bleeds gold, Corporate America circles above, hungry for more.

It’s a dark world. You take a moment to think. You could cash out now, and trade in your earnings with another buyer. Maybe Fun. Maybe Family. You know it could lead to a better life, but you can’t know for sure. Yet it doesn’t matter, you tell yourself.

The decision can always wait.