We have this thing called work entirely wrong. It’s upside
down and it’s no longer working. Working in the way we know it isn’t the law of
nature i.e. survival of the fittest, it is the product of our limited resources
based consciousness. We strive for endless economic growth and in the process
we have created a system that benefits a few while the rest of the world has to
suffer. We assume it has to be this way and nobody really asks how we got here
in the first place. The more comfortable we are, the less inclined we are to
question and yet somewhere, deep down, we know that something is wrong. It is
time for transformation because the system we have created is collapsing.
An unexpected thread recently presented itself in the course
of my conversations with people, mostly through work. In the job that I have
left very recently, I tried to help people in their business wherever I could.
Yet at some point during some conversations with clients I became tempted to
switch off my business persona and listen to them as people – meaning REALLY listen,
understand their challenges and commiserate where appropriate. This often
involved acknowledging that I didn’t have all the answers and in that way
exposing myself, risking looking like an idiot. The interesting thing was that
occasionally the roles were reversed and the client would listen to me as a
person and advise me on how to handle my approaching life changes (involving
leaving my country). The common theme that emerged was that people are tired of
being on a treadmill. They have to work more and more for less and less money
and they start asking themselves what the point is.
My mother used to tell me that money makes the world go
round. This is such a profoundly untrue statement and yet it’s the belief that
society is based on. The world goes round of its own accord and life renews
itself without our interference. If anything, we just destroy what is given to
us for free in favour of making space for things we can make money of. Looking
at the way society functions, we have to have money to get by and yet if we
take arbitrary things out of the equation then I wonder how much we really
need. Civilisation didn’t get there all by itself and yet I wonder what the
money and the work that made it all happen is based on. It’s not even the same
in every country. I was taught that if you work hard it will pay off. Yet when
I started working in “the system” I realised how far from accurate this
statement is. If we understand the original idea behind work from an
existential and cosmic perspective better then I think we might come closer to
the truth.
I’ve never been a fan of laziness and yet looking around me at all the things
that “money” produce I think it’s based on symbols, belief and magic more than
hard work, necessity and survival of the fittest. When I was younger and having
trouble getting through a school day I would occasionally have anxiety about “surviving”
when I grew up. I was afraid that I might at some point just become too tired
to work in the same way that I was too bored/tired at school to listen in class
and do my homework like I was supposed to. I remember being told once that I
should enjoy being a child because once you grow up you are no longer carefree
but weighed down by responsibilities. On the one hand I thought that it was
impossible because being a grown up meant that you could do whatever you wanted
to. On the other hand I didn’t enjoy much being a child and was wondering how
much worse it could get once I grew up. It also makes me ask the question, if
life sucks so much and the treadmill is a fact of life then why is it another “fact
of life” that we have to perpetuate the cycle by bringing new life into the
world? The “normal” course of life is to “grow up” in the way your parents see
fit so you could also be a responsible individual one day – one who would earn
enough money to provide for the family (if you’re a man) or always sacrifice
your own desires for everyone else (if you’re a woman). This is to protect the
children that you would raise so they could be responsible, bored and miserable
individuals like yourself one day. Once you’re thirty, you have to be settled,
rich and have a family or you’re a misfit at best, a drifter at worst.
I recognise the tiredness that I dreaded as child in others
and even when it’s my job to tell clients that they “should” be putting in more
effort, I would rather sympathise. The dreamer in me wants to know what society
would be like if everyone thought differently about work. Perhaps in the world that
we live in now, work is a means to “get by”; a necessity rather than a choice. Yet
when you want to apply for a job, potential employers expect you to be “enthusiastic”,
“driven”, “passionate” etc. like you’d work on their objectives for the love of
it rather than because you need the money.
We misunderstand work. The new age spiritual teachers would
tell you that “thought is creative” and yet people often forget about the
importance of action. Work is the action that provides the fuel to our
thoughts. I don’t think there is any more powerful way to create ourselves and
society than through what we put into our work. In a purely material sense it
means that if you do certain work you would get a certain something in return,
based on the parameters that have already been established. In a more direct
sense, work is much more than that. It is our means of bringing ourselves into
the world and it is possibly the most potent tool we have of collectively
creating the world.
Work as I like to believe it was originally intended is
about love and authenticity. It is why we exist and how we create meaning in
life. It is our answer to life’s most important question – who are you? The
answer might not lie in the fixed label of an invented profession, but in
defining ourselves through our actions in response to life’s challenges. It is
also the way in which we reinforce our beliefs about ourselves and the world to
our subconscious mind. If we believe that we will never have enough and have to
suffer in order to gain recognition and that is the way in which we work then
we will always be on a treadmill. If we believe that we have a gift to bring
and that the world can benefit from it then we might succeed in bringing more
light to our surroundings. Work is about the pleasure of creating what we would
like to see in the world.
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