Photo: Phoebe
Are you a hard worker?
If so, in all honesty does it pay off? I ask this because the more I look around these days, especially as I adapt to a life where I am thinking about things in a totally different way to the way I used to, I see hard work as "wrong turn" in life. Somewhere a very grave error of judgement was made and now you find yourself being a hard worker and as irony would have it the world seems to be full of people who don’t work as hard as you do and seem to be much better off than you are. How did that happen?
Well before I continue with this article I want to draw your attention to an article I found the other day about hard work and where the beliefs of the virtues of hard work were initially instilled in people to the point of them being adopted automatically by about 90% or more of the world’s population.
The article is here and it is both fascinating and enlightening. The Puritan Work Ethic
Now, after reading the above referenced article (if you read it) are your views on hard work the same? In truth, any views you have on the subject are most probably so deeply engrained into your sub-conscious that you may not even realize you have any views on it. In fact your views on hard work may not appear to you like opinions, but simply hard fact, imposed on you by reality.
What is prevalent in most of our minds is the notion that hard work is something of a noble virtue, even though the truth of it is that nobody else really cares how hard you are working. Hard work is something to be done out of a feeling of guilt… of something. I don’t actually know what of to be honest, but as mentioned in the article on the Puritan work ethic I agree that hard work can be defines as something we don’t want to do.
Look at The Rolling Stones. They are granddads and they still spend countless hours touring, which is tiring in your 20′s let alone your 60′s. It cannot be denied that they are busy guys and much of the time probably physically tired as well, but do you think they look at what they do as work, let alone hard work? This is the point. They make more money nearly every hard worker on the planet combined and they spend their life playing and they are not the only ones of course.
The expectation of this view of the typical view of a hard workera hard worker is one that brings with it the assumption that said hard worker possesses all the virtues of a so-called good person. Is it possible that this hard-working guy could be a stressed out, wife-beating alcoholic, pushed to breaking point by the very fact that he has to work so hard doing a job he hates, hating most of his life in order to provide all that he does for his family?
Am I being too harsh here?
I know I have a biased viewpoint about this because I don’t believe you should do a job you don’t like, just so you can afford to hand over your money to someone else who has lent it to you over the period of your whole life. There is more of a reason to be here than simply to apply for a lifetime debt and then spend the rest of it paying it back. What of the lender. Is he slaving away for 40 hours a week? I’ll leave you to answer that one for yourself.
This is a very controversial topic because it flies in the face of one of the most deeply set and widely agreed-upon beliefs in existence. Beliefs that span religion, language and background. It is only a tiny percentage of the world that believe the opposite that are living the lives of their dreams. With the internet having evolved as it has, it is becoming more visible and real a possibility to people than it used to be. I can understand that the notion of following your dreams and doing what you love bringing about the life you both desire and deserve would be a joke in, say the 1950′s just after a world war, people were left with nothing and not much of a choice of what to do next. Of course I can see that, but the fact is that is was still the truth back then and it was possible despite it being very difficult to believe what with the physical evidence around. Its just that now we have so many more channels for receiving information and we are being made aware of things at a rate quantum leaps ahead of even 20 years ago, let alone 50.
I have come to terms with the fact that I have always been at odds with the thought of working for a living, even though I have done so and have been productive for my employers in the past. I never used to believe myself to be a business man or entrepreneur, but with more awareness, which comes with following my heart I can see that that is what I always wanted to be.
For many years I used to think that maybe I was a bit of a lazy, irresponsible person. I wasn’t on the property ladder like many of my peers and I wasn’t interested in moving up within my career into management. I preferred to be one of the engineers. Seeing as I hadn’t got a family or dependents to support I was content with the salary and if I’m honest, although I have had some pretty good jobs in the past in terms of salary and perks, I never really did that much work. I did make sure I got out of doing a lot of work, but always made sure I did what I felt was important and effective. Of course, your boss only notices when you do something that either saves the company money or averts or solves a major, business impacting disaster, so I made sure I was always at the forefront when I saw an opportunity to play a part in doing that.
Well if I am lazy then I have no problem with that. I try to increase my value to others everyday, even if those increases are not yet apparent to most. I do not spend my day laying on a beach, doing nothing, but I don’t graft and I don’t worry about whether I can pay the bills or not. Worry is a prayer for what you do not want.
