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Work and Coffee
If there’s one thing I’ve learned and enjoyed about working near a coffee shop is that any great idea, engaging discussion or even philosophical discoveries, and search for life answers can be brewed over a cup of coffee. hahahahaha The caffeine-induced souls speak volumes whenever they get the chance to sip some frap cream. The macchiato-filled minds allow people to think and think some more. The overpriced grandes and ventis allow people to pay more attention to the way they verbalize their passions.
My
track record tells me that I had some of the best and most stirring discussions
with people over cups of coffee… and maybe with some croissant. Earlier tonight
was one good example. Our troop had a two hour mind battle over coffee, about
non-work things, about indescribable happiness, and some recurring dreams and mirror
actions in between. And after that, tada: a complete research of our seducing
session.
This
is a very good read.
---
Work
by Kent Nerburn
I
often hear people say, "I have to find myself." What they really mean
is, "I have to make myself." Life is an endlessly creative
experience, and we are making ourselves every moment by every decision we make.
That
is why the work you choose for yourself is so crucial to your sense of value
and well-being. No matter how much you might believe that your work is
nothing more than what you do to make money, your work makes you who you are,
because it is where you put your time.
I
remember several years ago when I was intent upon building my reputation as a
sculptor. I took a job driving a cab, because, as I told people, "I want
some job that I will never confuse with a profession." Yet within six
months, I was talking like a cab driver, thinking like a cab driver, looking at
the world through the eyes of a cab driver. My anecdotes came from my job, as
did my observations about life. I became embroiled in the personalities and
politics of the company for which I worked and developed the habits and rhythms
of life that went along with my all-night driving shift. On the days when I did
not drive and instead worked on my sculpture, I still carried the consciousness
of a cab driver with me.
Whether
I liked it or not, I was a cab driver.
This
happens to anyone who takes a job. Even if you hate a job and keep a distance
from it, you are defining yourself in opposition to the job by resisting it. By
giving the job your time, you are giving it your consciousness. And it will, in
turn, fill your life with the reality that it presents.
Many
people ignore this fact. They choose a profession because it seems exciting, or
because they can make a lot of money, or because it has some prestige in their
minds. They commit themselves to their work, but slowly find themselves feeling
restless and empty. The time they have to spend on their work begins to hang
heavy on their hands, and soon they feel constricted and trapped.
They
join the legions of humanity who Thoreau said lead lives of quiet desperation -
unfulfilled, unhappy and uncertain of what to do.
Yet
the lure of financial security and the fear of the unknown keep them from
acting to change their lives, and their best energies are spent creating
justifications for staying where they are or inventing activities outside of
work that they hope will provide them with a sense of meaning.
But
these efforts can never be totally successful. We are what we do, and the
more we do it, the more we become it. The only way out is to change our
lives or to change our expectations for our lives. And if we lower our
expectations we are killing our dreams, and a man without dreams is already
half dead.
So
you need to choose your work carefully. You need to look beyond the external
measurements of prestige and money and glamour to see what you will be doing on
a day-to-day, hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute basis to see if that is how you
want to spend your time. Time may not be the way you measure the value of
your work, but it is the way you experience it.
What
you need to do is think of work as "vocation." This word may seem
stilted in its tone, but it has a wisdom within it. It comes from the Latin
word for calling, which comes from the word for voice. In those meanings it
touches on what work really should be. It should be something that calls
to you as something you want to do, and it should be something that gives voice
to who you are and what you want to say to the world.
So a
true vocation calls to you to perform it and it allows your life to speak. This
is very different from work, which is just an exchange of labor for money. It
is even very different from a profession, which is an area of expertise you
have been sanctioned to represent.
A
vocation is something you feel compelled to do, or at least something that
fills you with a sense of meaning. It is something you choose because of
what it allows you to say with your life, not because of the money it pays you
or the way it will make you appear to others. It is, above all else, something
that lets you love.
When
you find a vocation, embrace it with your whole heart. Few people are so lucky.
They begin their search for work with an eye to the wrong prize, so when they
win, they win something of little value. They gain money or prestige, but
they lose their hearts. Eventually their days become nothing more than a
commodity that they exchange for money, and they begin to shrivel and die.
I
often think of a man I met on the streets of Cleveland. He was an
assembly-line worker in an automobile plant. He said his work was so hateful
that he could barely stand to get up in the morning. I asked him why he didn't
quit. "I've only got thirteen more years to go to retirement," he
answered. And he meant it. His life had so gotten away from him that he was
willing to accept a thirteen-year death sentence for his spirit rather than
give up the security it earned.
When
I spoke with him I was about twenty. I was young and free; I didn't understand
what he was saying at all. It seemed incomprehensible to me that a man could
have become so defeated by life that he was willing to let his life die as he
held it in his hands.
Now I
understand too well. Lured by what had seemed like big money at the time, he
had chosen a job that didn't offer him any inner satisfaction. He lived a good
life, rolling from paycheck to paycheck and getting the car or the boat that he
had always dreamed of having. Year by year he advanced, because businesses
reward perseverance. His salary went up, his options for other types of
employment went down, and he settled into a routine that financed his life. He
married, bought a house, had children, and grew into middle age. The job that
had seemed like freedom when he was young became a deadening routine. Year by
year he began to hate it. It choked him, but he had no means of escape. He
needed its money to live; no job he might change to would pay him as much as he
was currently making. His fear for the health and security of his family kept
him from breaking free into a world where all things were possible but no
things were paid for, and so he gave in.
"I've
only got thirteen more years to retirement" was a prisoner's way of
counting the days until the job would release him and pay him for his freedom.
Most
people's lives are a variation on that theme. So few take the time when
they are young to explore the real meaning of the jobs they are taking or to
consider the real implications of the occupations to which they are committing
their lives.
Some
have no choice. Without money, without training, with the pressures of life
building around them, they choose the best alternative that offers itself. But
many others just fail to see clearly. They chase false dreams, and fall
into traps they could have avoided if they had listened more closely to their
hearts when choosing their life's work.
But
even if you listen closely to your heart, making the right choice is difficult.
You can't really know what it is you want to do by thinking about it. You have
to do it and see how it fits. You have to let the work take you over until it
becomes you and you become it; then you have to decide whether to embrace it or
abandon it. And few have the courage to abandon something that defines their
security and prosperity.
Yet
there is no reason why a person cannot have two, three or more careers in the
course of a life. There is no reason why a person can't abandon a job that does
not fit anymore and strike out into the unknown for something that lies closer
to the heart. There is risk, there is loss, and there likely will be privation.
If you have allowed your job to define your sense of self-worth, there may even
be a crisis of identity. But no amount of security is worth the suffering
of a life lived chained to a routine that has killed all your dreams.
You
must never forget that to those who hire you, your labor is a commodity. You
are paid because you provide a service that is useful. If the service you
provide is no longer needed, it doesn't matter how honorable, how diligent, how
committed you have been in your work. If what you can contribute is no longer
needed, you are no longer needed and you will be let go. Even if you've
committed your life to the job, you are, at heart, a part of the commercial
exchange, and you are valuable only so long as you are a significant
contributor to that commercial exchange. It is nothing personal; it's just the
nature of economic transaction.
So it
does not pay to tie yourself to a job that kills your love of life. The job
will abandon you if it has to. You can abandon the job if you have to.
The
man I met in Cleveland may have been laid off the year before he was due to
retire. He may have lost his pension because of a legal detail he never knew
existed. He may have died on the assembly line while waiting to put a bolt in a
fender.
I
once had a professor who dreamed of being a concert pianist. Fearing the
possibility of failure, he went into academics where the work was secure and
the money was predictable. One day, when I was talking to him about my
unhappiness in my graduate studies, he walked over and sat down at his piano.
He played a beautiful glisando and then, abruptly, stopped. "Do what is in
your heart," he said. "I really only wanted to be a concert pianist.
Now I spend every day wondering how good I might have been."
Don't
let this be your epitaph at the end of your working life. Find out what
it is that burns in your heart and do it. Choose a vocation, not a job, and
you will be at peace. Take a job instead of finding a vocation, and eventually
you will find yourself saying, "I've only got thirteen more years to
retirement," or "I spend every day wondering how good I might have
been."
We all owe ourselves better than that.
one of the best entry that captures my heart. Need to re-read this over and over. Goodluck on your journey! It will definitely be a long and fulfilling one. Have fun! :)
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