Why We Work … So Hard
Even the best job in the world
can be difficult to enjoy on a bad day.
No matter how rewarding your work is,
no matter how much meaning you derive from it,
there are those times when you wonder if it makes sense
to devote most of your waking hours to one pursuit.
“Wouldn’t it be better
to spend part of my day outdoors?” you think.
“Shouldn’t I be helping those in need?
Will I ever find a way
to express the innermost reaches of my soul?”
Taken from “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work,” from Alain de Botton who asks what is perhaps his most unsettling question yet: What does all this work add up to, in such a short life? After enviously surveying a room full of paintings that present explicit evidence of what the artist has accomplished over the course of several years, he reflects,
“Our exertions generally find
no enduring physical correlatives.
We are diluted in gigantic intangible collective projects,
which leave us wondering
what we did last year and, more profoundly,
where we have gone
and quite what we have amounted to.
We confront our lost energies
in the pathos of the retirement party.”
I have read two of his books and adored both. This was a great reminder to check the library tomorrow.
I so agree Mrs, Bandings. I loved How Proust Can Change Your Life. His books are aways
thought provoking.