Abflug

I do not believe in the life jacket. It hangs there to make you feel safe while you are already doing the very thing that is killing you.

Ties hang from it like from a hook in the hallway the exact same one you take something off every morning and hang back up every evening. The gear of an entire professional life condensed into a single wall mounted object. You gear up tie by tie appointment by appointment and call it progress. I call it dead weight.

In the midst of it all a fish that is not a fish. A decoy that looks like prey but has nothing left to catch. That is how I imagine it ends when for your whole life you know only the water your career allows an image of something living where nothing has been alive for a long time.

The vest itself inflates the moment you pull the cord just as it is supposed to when nothing else can save you. But the person pulling it here is not doing so in a real emergency. They do it out of habit day after day without anything ever happening to justify the vest existence. Safety becomes mere set dressing.

Those who surrender to a career gear up for a crash that never plays out in public. What remains is not salvation but the thing you strapped on to feel savable and a decoy pretending to be life. It offers no protection. It drags you down.

I call it takeoff because it looks like setting out but in truth it is a descent.
Would you like to refine any specific phrasing further?