Recently, I received an SMS from a friend that reads "Hate working life man.. the work's ok but the people's full of shit.. u can quote me in your blog". Hahaaa.
I thought to myself, seems so apt that I had recently posted wisdom of the cabs, and replied him to read it and he would understand. His reply was people like them work to live, while most of us live to work. Hmmmn....
Sounds so familiar again and I remember the a similar question "Do we eat to live or live to eat?".
I would argue that we should eat to live and not live to eat. And similarly, I would accept the wisdom of the aussie cab driver on work to live and not live to work. It will be a very depressing thought for me that our lives that would be just focused on work alone and not on other good things in life, like family, love, enjoyable hobbies and attaining of the fruits of knowledge (which in turn helps to improve our lives).
Likewise do we eat to live to enable us to function as a human so that we can pursue the above pursuits in life that I mentioned? Of course, food connoisseurs would argue that the purpose of life on earth is to eat the fine foods while we are able to. But, ah.... be warned that too much fine and great tasting foods would result in great health risks and thus shorten the very life that is so precious.
Well, does it sound crude to put Work and Eating together in these terms? Maybe not after all, because the reason why people work is of course to be able to monetarily provide the means to support themselves; for food, clothing and shelter which has been the basic needs that humans has been striving to attain for millenias.
I remembered I read a masterful piece by Joanne B. Cillua on The Working Life: The Promise and Betrayal of Modern Work . Again, reading this book helps me to understand the great dissatisfaction of why people have on work. Read the review and you shall know what I mean.
So, the question we should ourselves as quoted in the book is actually:
"When you are on your deathbed, will you wish you had spent more time at the office?"
St. Bernard still has the book I think.....
I thought to myself, seems so apt that I had recently posted wisdom of the cabs, and replied him to read it and he would understand. His reply was people like them work to live, while most of us live to work. Hmmmn....
Sounds so familiar again and I remember the a similar question "Do we eat to live or live to eat?".
I would argue that we should eat to live and not live to eat. And similarly, I would accept the wisdom of the aussie cab driver on work to live and not live to work. It will be a very depressing thought for me that our lives that would be just focused on work alone and not on other good things in life, like family, love, enjoyable hobbies and attaining of the fruits of knowledge (which in turn helps to improve our lives).
Likewise do we eat to live to enable us to function as a human so that we can pursue the above pursuits in life that I mentioned? Of course, food connoisseurs would argue that the purpose of life on earth is to eat the fine foods while we are able to. But, ah.... be warned that too much fine and great tasting foods would result in great health risks and thus shorten the very life that is so precious.
Well, does it sound crude to put Work and Eating together in these terms? Maybe not after all, because the reason why people work is of course to be able to monetarily provide the means to support themselves; for food, clothing and shelter which has been the basic needs that humans has been striving to attain for millenias.
I remembered I read a masterful piece by Joanne B. Cillua on The Working Life: The Promise and Betrayal of Modern Work . Again, reading this book helps me to understand the great dissatisfaction of why people have on work. Read the review and you shall know what I mean.
So, the question we should ourselves as quoted in the book is actually:
"When you are on your deathbed, will you wish you had spent more time at the office?"
St. Bernard still has the book I think.....
Again, we all have a choice. Basically, in my opinion we have three choices:
1) Do good work and accept the people politics as part and parcel of the environment.
2) Do a lousy job or cruise along and start playing politics to ensure your survival.
3) Leave for other pastures and start anew.
For me, 1) will be my primary choice irregardless. Last resort would be option 3). Doing option 2) is just too exhausting and meaningless and does not add value for the organization or to ourselves. This is what the incompetent and incapable are good at. We always hear that if you can't beat them, you might as well join them! Well, think about it... you will be like joining a rock band that sing not for the pleasure of their fans but only for themselves; which in the long run, this rock band will surely fail.
Self-interested individuals in a complex environments do not survive long without help; the basic foundation block of human societies has been cooperation, realtionship-building and communities. This is how we humans has lept from being a caveman to the modern homo-sapiens we are today.
So, journeyman.... read the my tagline in blue....
1 comment:
I recently read a book by Mortimer Adler. It covers, amongst many topics, his opinions on work, leisure and play etc. I'll quote one of his many opinions here,"The real solution for worker's happiness and their satisfaction is to make the work itself less of a drudgery and more intrinsically worthwhile so that more and more it becomes a labor of love." This statement is of cause somewhat generalised but he was trying to say that increasing wages is not the solution to worker dissatisfaction/unhappiness. You may disagree with him. He defined a "labor of love" as something a person would do even if he wasn't rewarded for it. It brings me back to another quote which i picked up yrs ago which goes roughly like this "if you have enough money to comfortably take care of your needs for your entire life, what would you choose to work as?" Your answer to that, is the "job" that is most intrinsically rewarding for you.
Think it's time we dwell less on work!
Post a Comment