Sunday 13 January 2013

Question: Are you working to live or living to work?


Do I like it in an office? Dad says I only feel uncomfortable here because it’s a new environment I’m not used to- good point, but it doesn’t help I’m a dozen ages younger than everybody here. Maybe I’d be better off in the back kitchen of some cafe or begin a course at a Uni here, I mean, I don’t have to finish right? I know people who drop out. It’s just an ‘in-case’ scenario, which you need when living in Doha, Qatar because the Royal family are the law and what they say, goes. If they want shut down all the malls in the country for a month and momentarily forget that the employees will be jobless and make no money for that month, so be it. It’s happened before. 

What is the ‘important’ question within all of this? Is it ‘what am I going to be?’ or ‘what job will I be working in five or ten years?’ or is it maybe ‘who will I be?’
Do values matter in a world now a shade grey? Is it about those quotes that make you feel, for a nano of a second that you could be whatever you wanted? About working to live? Or is it the other way round, living to work? Is work just another compartment amongst others labelled ‘housework’, ‘shopping’ and ‘entertainment’? Some believe work should be something you enjoy, a hobby even, but isn’t that hard for people to achieve? And if so, should those people give up trying and settled for a desk job stapling paper and straining their eyes at the computer screen? Or should they search for it, study for it or work they way up to it? Is work our entirety at the end of a life? Or is our life meant to be bigger than 9 to 5 every weekday with sloppy weekends? 

Why do we work? Some it’s solely to gather money, whether in a tight spot or simply greedy. But I think the general reason is because we must work, we have no choice, we need to feed our children, clothe them with the latest accessories and get them to a respectable college someday. Work, whether we enjoy the job or not, is for money and money to meet needs and desires. 

Should a job be for making money for ones own benefit or for others? Voluntary jobs in orphanages, missions and the like that either are not paid or are minimum wage, are they of less importance because they don’t wear suits? Why is it that the jobs that benefit people who have almost nothing are paid little, but those who work in tall buildings, pay tax and don’t seem to benefitting anybody but themselves and the government get so much more? Is it fair? Should it even matter? 

Jobs. Work. Day in, day out. All types of work: business, construction, hospitality, voluntary, entertainment etc. So, should work make us happy? Should it energize us, make our heads spin with ideas? Or should it be drab, making the clock seem to tick slower and slower? Why should work make us happy? Should we bunny-hop through part-time work or have a career in mind? Which is right? Maybe we shouldn’t be so fussy and be grateful for whatever job we manage to receive. Could you imagine if your hobby was your job? In a parallel universe- fishing, a circus act, pianist, artist, fashion designer, dancer, food critic, futurist- you could be anything you had a passion for.

 Maybe there’s an invisible line separating the people who dream to work, and others who work to dream. Is either better than the other? I don’t think there should be discrimination against one or the other. Each job should make each individual smile at the end of the day, lift the mist of confusion and give them a purpose, a goal to pursue, direction. A job can be whatever you make it to be: your life or just a part of your life. A job can sometimes be our lifestyle, it can shape us. We could be that artist struggling make money by selling paintings on Ebay and doing shifts at the cafe. We could be the paramedic on call at night, a career unlike the artist. How do people know what career they want? Is it something some people are born with? Do they figure it out by the end of university? Is a career necessary? What comes to mind when you think ‘career’? 

These questions are my own questions. It’s my way of trying to figure out what is right, what should be, what shouldn’t and trying to see where I’m headed. My therapist once told me, “There’s no right or wrong decision. Once it’s made, that’s when you’ll find out whether you like what you’re doing or not.” 

It made me rethink a lot of things. I see a majority of the world in black-and-white, that includes religion, type of work, relationships, opinions etc. The past two years have been hard on me as I’ve been working on broadening my colour scheme and accepting some things in life as: grey. 
All my questions about work, half of them I already know the answer too deep down, but generally in the large scope of life and everything in between, work is a shade of grey. Work is something you come across or look for and make for yourself.

Thank you for reading,
Riahta 

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