Being the Top Dogs

Photo by Man Chung on Unsplash

With the wind howling and rain pressing against the windows, Typhoon Ragasa has arrived. The streets are quiet, work has slowed, and I’ve slipped into a pondering mode. Am I building my life in the right direction? What is everyone else doing? Why do we all want to climb the ladder? And what happens if we don’t?

Ladders are everywhere — not just in corporate life, but in social status, wealth, even family. A high rank promises more resources and a sense of security (however temporary that may be). A wolf pack needs an alpha; so do human packs. Some of us are born with the instinct to lead, but many more of us are taught to want it.

You may have heard the saying: “A soldier who does not want to become a general is a bad soldier.” It reinforces the belief that ambition must point upward. But think about it — these man-made ranks can be chopped into infinite layers: sergeants, lieutenants, colonels, generals. Each with its own badge. Life mirrors the same game: a Toyota, a Lexus, a Rolls-Royce, a Bugatti. Why are we so eager to sort ourselves into brackets? We self-sort because we’ve been trained to believe status equals progress.

Now and then, breakthroughs appear. Remember when people applauded Facebook’s flat structure back in 2008? For a while, it felt revolutionary. Yet over time, the industry self-sorted again. Even tech, once scrappy and flat, has grown into “Big Tech.”

So what if we step off the ladder altogether? Refuse to arrange ourselves in a vertical array. That choice, too, carries a cost. The rich are getting richer. Industries catering to high-net-worth individuals — private banking, wealth management, bespoke insurance — are booming. The ladder rewards those at the top with compounding advantages.

For those who opt out, resources can be scarcer, opportunities more constrained. Inequality sharpens the divide between top dogs and everyone else. Not climbing carries real risks — financial, social, even psychological.

But life is an adventure. I’m beginning to wonder if the better path is to grow a petit jardin of my own. One that’s fully mine, where I no longer need to obsess about “going up.” In this garden, I can choose what plants to nurture, adapt to seasonal changes, watch out for the bugs, and even prepare to face the typhoons.

A little garden may never rival the view from the top of the ladder. But it will give me joy. And as it grows, I grow with it.