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It happens slowly, with quiet stealth and careful deliberation, like the perfect jewelry heist. Only the theft of our lifestyle is one in which we are complicit if only unwittingly. After all, we have eagerly invited the burglar into our lives and played the gracious host, offering our time and our energy with the generosity with which we would offer crudites at a cocktail party. We are charmed by this charlatan; seduced by flattery and attracted by the allure of success.

The job interview is where it starts. Eager for acceptance, we primp and preen, dangling accomplishments like diamonds in the hopes of enticing an offer. A practiced eye sizes us up; searching for flaws, evaluating our worth, and able to uncover a fraud in five questions or less. We are delighted to learn that we have sufficiently impressed and are offered the reward of permanent employment. Our immediate agreement to the terms makes us an accomplice for what is to come, but we do not know it yet.

We go home and announce our success to the mild fanfare of the family, and apologize for being late for dinner. We were signing our offer letter, after all. They understand - this time, but the radiant sparkle in their eyes seems to flicker, if only for a moment. In all the excitement, we do not notice.

Our first day comes and goes with few surprises. We meet our coworkers, settle into the cubicle farm that will become our second home and start plowing through the meaningless drudgery that will clamor for our attention eight to twelve hours each day. Only three - five - ten more years to Manager Director V.P. Our jobs demand more and we happily comply; offering up all remaining outside interests in favor of larger offices, higher salaries and more responsibility. A sixty-hour workweek seems like a reasonable compromise for a six-figure income

Before we know it, we have become enamored of e-mail and besotted with board meetings. We pick up breakfast at the drive-thru and dinner from the vending machines conveniently located down the hall. As our workdays expand so does our waistline. In our rush from one meeting to the next, we occasionally pass the on-site gym that was plugged in the benefits package, but we've never actually set foot inside.

We console ourselves with creature comforts; stocking our closets with designer clothes and our homes with HDTV's. We invest in gadgets for our hobbies and they stay neatly packed in their boxes, gathering dust on a shelf somewhere. We buy lavish birthday gifts

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