Monday 10 December 2007

Day 338 - your job, or your life?

Whether or not they believe it to be true, most people I know behave as if their job is more important than their life.

Life is a 'being' thing.

Job is a 'doing' thing.

In my experience, things only start to work when the latter comes out of the former... i.e your doing, your work, your legacy, is a direct result of self expression - i.e you have found what you love doing and are happy with it.

There's a key breakthrough to be made here... A fun-da-ment-al distinction.

I wonder... I wonder if I am the guy - to make that breakthrough happen...

Are people ready to see western culture for what it has become - a disease?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I struggle with life/job daily.

I honestly believe that I am not doing what I am meant too. Sounds corny. My job/career keeps me up at night but not in a good way. I don't love it. I don't even like it. I sit at the computer ALL day and I hate it.

However, my co-workers and reasonable fiance tell me that a company and pay like this doesn't come by often so I should be greatful to have it.

So I keep the job.

I'll find a transition point sometime. There has to be a middle ground.

But thank you, thank yo, thank you.

B said...

I cannot tell you how many conversations I've had with people to this effect. It amazes me how many people resign their lives to a job. And the implications upon society are huge.

Maybe this is your calling where writing is concerned?

Take A Year Out said...

Colleen - See the possibilities here... You can leave! Just do it.

People think that life will finish when the pay check does - but in my experience that is when it starts. Your life opens up as you re-discover your resourcefulness, awake your dormant faculties of appreciation and miracle working, and start to actually invent your life and your job for you, not re-invent yourself for your life / job.

You don't have to just walk out. Just start exploring other things - make the choice in your heart 'i do not enjoy this, so I am going to leave it'.

And then start to explore again - think - what moves, touches and inspires you?

It is these things that move you, touch you and inspire you, in my experience, that make you realise that the 'transition point' you speak of, can simply whenever you choose it to be.

One of my principals in life is simply 'Do it now'.

Realising you have the choice to walk away from that which makes you unhappy is the key.

The power is all yours.

The pay check, incentives and assurances of big company employment are only reassuring because of the culture we live in, which forces us into a 'destination existence' - western society's most elaborate hoax.

When I made the choice to just start living my journey - living totally in the day - and making the choices which served my own happiness - I was led rapidly to a life I love living.

I'll expand on this at a later date - thank you for your comment colleen.

B - I like writing about this stuff - maybe you're right.

t.a.y.o

La Belette Rouge said...

There are plenty of "jobs" that I have had that were about some future reward they promised--be it money, promotion or other good. Other jobs, happily, like the one I went to grad school to get--I feel uses my life force. When I am doing it I am not imagining the good it can give me--rather I am astounded to discover the good I experience doing good.

Take A Year Out said...

L.B.R - glad to hear it. The way I view work, indeed the whole meaning of the word 'work' turned completely on its head when I chose to make my role in the world a positive one...

Have you ever heard this phrase:

'When a child gives away candy, all they experience is having less candy...'

Making the shift from being such a child to being a person who experiences the joy of contribution, for me, is the single biggest leap that a person can make in life.

I have so many friends who 'have it all' - the house, the family, the car, the salary the... zzzzzzzz. And still they complain about this 'missing' in their lives. This emptiness.

And I tell them what it is - it's contribution. To the world outside of our families and friends. Making our ripple effect a positive one is the key to it all.

But so indoctrinated are they to serve only themselves that this seems absurd to them.

Anonymous said...

Yes. I can leave. It's a difficult transition but one I know I want to make.

Thank you so much. Keep writing.