The Perfect Job

So many people do not really like the Job they do. They do it for the money only. They long for a simpler life, and doing something that they feel a passion for. If you think about how much time we spend working, this a really unhealthy state of affairs. " We spent our health on gaining wealth." Health of ourselves, and our environment, even the health of our future on gaining wealth. Happy people live longer, are healthier, more resilient to life's "curved balls" and they are much more productive. It is people who feel a passion for what they do, that contributes most to the advancement of mankind. Is the worship of money killing humanity and our environment?

Of course there is nothing wrong with money or being rich, money is just an exchangeable commodity. We trade our efforts, using own energy and abilities to get in exchange something we feel we need or desire, either for survival, or to make our lives happier, or what will enable us to grow. In the world we live in today money equals power – big energy resources at your disposal to achieve your aims. However, the aims have lost touch with real life, the organic growing and inter-relatedness of everything; now energy is spent not to achieve human advancement, but in order to collect the energy itself, store it, dam it, protect it, and hopefully as a by-product find some happiness. The very flow of life is getting blocked in how we aquire energy. The world that we have created is not fit for sustainable life.

How many workplaces takes the needs of raising a family into account, especially now, when most mothers also work? We may have made great technological advances in making our lives better, but it has not made us any happier. Most people are stressed out, and the children suffers most, growing up in an environment that is not suitable for optimal healthy development; physically, mentally, or psychologically. The work environment is purely designed to produce and gather most economic benefits, It operates in an isolated environment devoid of compassion, or understanding of the inter-relations between our humanity and our environment, it has no regard for the health of the family, or understanding of how the health of the family affects the health of the whole. It does not cultivate our humanness, it degrades it. The grudging changes that have been made are mostly tokes to appease the activists, and not out desire to make real changes that will help the whole.

Of course it does not help to point fingers to the outside, we are willing slaves. In reality the only boundaries that exists are in our minds. You can truly do, and have what you desire, however, the question is, are you willing to pay the price? Like Faust, we are willing to sell our souls, and think that we will not regret paying the price. Often we do not realize that , that which we exchanged, would be the very thing we will in the future most desire. Little did Faust realize that,that which he deemed cheap, and worthless, would be that which will realize was the most priceless pocession he had. Are we not like Faust in our pursuit of fortune, and shallow pleasure?

I thought to quote just a paragraph from the man that speaks my thoughts, Kahlil Gibran, but after reading it again, I felt that I want to show the whole cloth he woven from, " the threads drawn from (his) heart, even as if (his) beloved were to wear that cloth."

'You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.

For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life's pocession that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.

Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.

But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born.

And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,

And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret.

But if you in your pain call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow, then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow shall wash away that which is written.

You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.

And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,

And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge.

And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,

And all work is empty save when there is love;

And when you work with love you bind yourself

to yourself, and one to one another, and to God.

And what is it to work with love?

It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.

It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.

It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.

It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,

And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.

Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in a sleep ,

'He who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in stone, is nobler that he who ploughs the soil.

'And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet.'

But I say, not in sleep, but in the overwakefulness of noontide, that the winds speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;

And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.

Work is love made visible.

And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.

And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge will disttils a poison in the grape.

And if you sing through as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night."

The Prophet