This month saw me change my workplace. The switch has been recent and no, this piece is not a comparative analysis of one workplace with the other. It's time a twenty three year old man (at which age the society deems sensibility, logic & maturity in your choice of a career but reacts aghast at choice of your life partner) appreciates the fact that workplaces differ and complaining, whining and pining makes no sense. And like all stereotype twenty three year olds I have accepted this ultimate reality and carried on with my life.
Well, since the last few days I have been interrogated with one question and thereafter presented with one piece of advise by every person who has been privy to my changing my work place. The question is the customary, "How do you find the New place", to which my typical answer is, "its different from the last one". As soon as I have answered that question quick follows the piece of Advise, "Don't worry, in due time You will get used to it" accompanied by a comforting smile.
While I am thankful to all those who made me compose myself I must admit that the first few times I did not even make a mental note of the advise. But as I kept hearing the same thing from every single person, I gave it more reflection than I believed it deserved. And the more I reflected upon it the more I realized that these words spring out from the Societal propensity to abhor moving out of comfort zones and to do things repeatedly hoping that someday we would feel comfortable doing them just because we have been doing them over a period of time.
Is this not what most of us make of their lives? Make a career decision at the age of eighteen or nineteen or even earlier and then spend a lifetime trying to get used to the decision, choosing a life-partner and trying to get used to spend a lifetime with her/him, and then pass on the 'getting used to' philosophy to our kids. When shall we all begin loving things that we do and not taking them for granted? When shall we venture out to do things because we love doing them? When will someone ask me if I am loving my new workplace or my new city or my new profession?
After all the one who said, "Blessed is the man who has found his work in play, let him ask for no other blessedness" was not entirely wrong. In fact he was very careful to say "his Work". Mark Twain said "What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it. Who was it who said, "Blessed is the man who has found his work"? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says his work--not somebody else's work. The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man's work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or physical, can never be great."
I don’t think the one who loves his work will ever do it to get used to doing it. All that getting used to doing does, is to suppress the desire to love your work and replace it with an involuntary drive to do it.
Well, since the last few days I have been interrogated with one question and thereafter presented with one piece of advise by every person who has been privy to my changing my work place. The question is the customary, "How do you find the New place", to which my typical answer is, "its different from the last one". As soon as I have answered that question quick follows the piece of Advise, "Don't worry, in due time You will get used to it" accompanied by a comforting smile.
While I am thankful to all those who made me compose myself I must admit that the first few times I did not even make a mental note of the advise. But as I kept hearing the same thing from every single person, I gave it more reflection than I believed it deserved. And the more I reflected upon it the more I realized that these words spring out from the Societal propensity to abhor moving out of comfort zones and to do things repeatedly hoping that someday we would feel comfortable doing them just because we have been doing them over a period of time.
Is this not what most of us make of their lives? Make a career decision at the age of eighteen or nineteen or even earlier and then spend a lifetime trying to get used to the decision, choosing a life-partner and trying to get used to spend a lifetime with her/him, and then pass on the 'getting used to' philosophy to our kids. When shall we all begin loving things that we do and not taking them for granted? When shall we venture out to do things because we love doing them? When will someone ask me if I am loving my new workplace or my new city or my new profession?
After all the one who said, "Blessed is the man who has found his work in play, let him ask for no other blessedness" was not entirely wrong. In fact he was very careful to say "his Work". Mark Twain said "What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it. Who was it who said, "Blessed is the man who has found his work"? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says his work--not somebody else's work. The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man's work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or physical, can never be great."
I don’t think the one who loves his work will ever do it to get used to doing it. All that getting used to doing does, is to suppress the desire to love your work and replace it with an involuntary drive to do it.
Great post!
ReplyDeleteGreat Thought sunil!
You are sooo right about every word you've put in your post!
But I guess everybody does not have the freedom or the courage to chase a dream career, so then they have to settle down for something less and get used to it!
Because all of us have to make a living anyway!
Besides you cannot expect a drainage cleaner to love his job but he gotta do it!
Consider what Martin Luther King Jr. had to say:
ReplyDelete"If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well."
Well,
Easier said then done, I feel!
ReplyDeleteAgain a great thought, but very difficult to practically follow it in life!
How can anybody be expected to love a stinky job as drainage cleaning??
Maybe my imagination ain't that large to think it possible...........Its human beings I am talking about- and so, anything is possible! :-)