I remember having a conversation around the dinner table when I was a teenager. The meal was winding down and as was usual in our family, we began to discuss subjects of interest to us. This was often a time when my Mother and Father would impart their wisdom to us and we, as children, would be able to share our insights. I think that at this time, my eldest bother had already left for the Navy so it was my parents, my older brother Anthony, myself and my two younger sisters.
Somehow the conversation turned to a point where I made the statement, "I will never work for a living." My Father was aghast! He actually became angry at this point and considered my statement to be absolutely incorrect in any context. I was confused and startled by his response.
The point that I was making at the time was that it is better to do something that is fun and get paid for that than to go to work at a job you hate, just to "make a living". I continued to defend my position though my Dad felt that it was incorrect on principle. My Mom just sat back and smiled.
After I graduated from high school I had the opportunity to work in an auto manufacturing plant during the summer before I headed off to Purdue. I was working the night shift and the work was 10 hours per day, 6 days a week. I never thought about it at the time, but my family probably had to pull some strings to get me that job. Had I stuck with it over the summer, I would have had enough money to cover all of my college expenses.
I lasted two weeks.
I couldn’t take it, I felt like I was working as some kind of general purpose robot. After a couple of days, I would dream of the cars coming down the assembly line conveyor. I would wake up in the dark and go to sleep in the dark and never see the sun, and this was during the summer!
The guy who worked next to me was high all the time and yet he still got his work done. After a while I understood why.
That experience confirmed for me my conviction that I would never "work" for a living.
I recognize in retrospect that I am truly blessed. The work that I love to do is in demand and it pays quite well. Even so, there have been times when I have envied the folks who could go to a job and have no real attachment to what they were doing and then come home and "have a life" away from their "work". Finding a balance between the work that I love and the rest of my life has been a struggle. Not only that, I also have a BS metric. As long as a job is at least 50% fun, I can do it without emotional stress. I have never found a job that passed that metric for more than a day or so, and I have always (until the DOT.COM bubble burst) been able to find work within a matter of a couple of weeks.
I honestly have no clue what it is like to get up and go to a job that I don’t enjoy. This has often left me clueless when it comes to empathizing with those who have spent their whole life struggling to make ends meet by any means necessary. That pretty much covers most the adult population of the US.
When I hear someone say, "I have some things that I have to do." I think to my self, "why?" Why do you have to do anything? Who is forcing this on you? Is it right that you should be compelled to do something that you don’t really want to do? Shouldn’t people do what it is that they want instead of what it is that they must?
What is it about our society, even our world, that people are not able, or allowed, to do what it is that they desire to do the most? It seems clear to me that the person who receives a bunch of money who is then able to do whatever they choose does not usually find happiness. Therefore, I can’t see it as just being able to live without having to work. For me, it is the fulfillment of my purpose in life. That is what I want more than anything else. I need only to be aware of that purpose and have the opportunity to express it. The logical expression of that purpose for me is to share it with the world. It is in the gift of giving of my self in the form of fulfilling my purpose that my greatest desire is fulfilled.
So, I think I’ll keep on doing what I want to do…