Year End Thoughts from the Nomad
Just a little end-of-the-year musings for no apparent reason. Well, okay, the reason is pretty apparent.
Do you ever wonder about the structure of the world, versus the structure of the world that "They" tell you should be in place. Let's follow the logic:
1. One must eat to live.
2. In order to eat, one must have money. (Or some plants/animals to pluck, milk, shoot, grill, etc. Not my way.)
3. In order to have money, one must have a job.
4. In order to have a job, one must spend most of ones time away from home, family, friends, etc. doing tasks which generally one would not do if someone else were not paying us to do it.
So, in order to live, one must spend most of one's time away from those one loves.
But "They" tell you a different tale:
1. One must spend as much time with family and friends as possible in order to live well.
2. Jobs tend to take one away from family and friends.
3. "No one ever said on his death bed, "I wish I had spent more time in the office."
So, in order to live well, one must avoid work as much as possible to maximize time with family and friends.
So, we live on the edge of a knife, working enough to live and provide which working little enough to maximize relationships. Fall off the knife's edge in one direction and you may live with a lot of cash, but won't care about living. Fall off the edge in the other direction and you will enjoy your time on earth… but won't have a whole lot of it.
I dunno. The "live to work or work to live" thing has been bothering me for some time. People like Roger Ebert (not the greatest proponent of this way of thinking, but the last one I read) say that you should find a job you love, so that you are earning money for doing the stuff you'd do anyway. Others - we all know them - see your job as your primary identity and thus that which defines your life (and therefore your legacy). And still others like to say that your job is just a way to put food on the table and allow you to do "what you really want to do." None of these seem satisfying to me.
Ebert's idea is all well and good, but the reason most people get paid to do something is BECAUSE it is a job that won't get done unless someone pays for it. I generally like my job as a business analyst. It exercises my creative aspect I thinking out new solutions, exercises my writing talents in producing specs, and exercises my technical talents in keeping me in the computing world. But if my employer didn't pay me to do it, I wouldn't be out writing specs or analyzing how business processes work. It is the rare person who is doing something they love and has someone walk up behind them and offer them cash to keep doing it.
The Job-Identity idea is very popular nowadays. (And I guess it always had been. As far back as the founding of the country, dinner party conversations in novels ALWAYS begin with "So, what do you do for a living?") People define their lives by their jobs. Working 8 hours a day in the office, bringing work home to do at night, hanging on their cell phones or e-mail late into the night and early in the morning, and every conversation is a chance to advance that identity. But it seems to me that this is foolish for a very simple reason. Your job is not "yours." We all have an employer who "owns" the job and can end it at any time. If you are a normal schlub, the boss is a literal person. If you are a business owner, your boss is the customers and the economy. If you are a minister (by which I mean, one who ministers whether religiously or not) then your boss is those who come to you for help. If they stop coming, your job ends. Thus, if your job is who you are, then YOU can suddenly cease to exist at any moment.
The Job-As-An-Enabler idea is very popular among a different set. Those for whom hobbies define them. They work all day, so they can come home at night and work on model trains, or thrash on their boards, or watch movies. The problem with this, of course, is that jobs have a funny tendency to grow with time. The man who spent 5 hours a day in high school in the convenience store spends 8 hours a day after high school, then spends 12 hours a day when he needs to make car payments, then spends 14 hours a day when he needs to buy a house, and suddenly between working and sleeping there is no time for "something else." I know there are those rare folks who decide to truly live for their hobbies, who make a career out of sleeping on other people's floors and bumming a dollar here and a dollar there from friends. But these are very rare, and in my experience are not any happier than the ones with a job. They simply are more easily bored, because of the mountains of free time.
So what is the proper role of your job in your life? Or perhaps the better question is, what is the proper role of your life? Must a life have meaning outside of service to God, family, and society? If not, does that mean only an exhausted man is a truly meaningful man? One who gives all of himself to one or all of this triumverate? If so, does the meaning come from ones actions or ones identity? God gives us all "meaning" and "worth" through His love. And yet, we still must work out our faith with "fear and trembling."
I do not yet have a complete answer. And probably will not for a while. But my favorite image of our lives that seems closest to what I can see darkly is a scene from C.S. Lewis's novel, PERELANDRA. The hero (Ransom) finds himself on a world of water, where even the islands are just rafts floating on a great sea. He tries to fight against the waves that toss and turn him this way and that, until finally he winds up exhausted on one of the floating islands. He discovers one of the natives there, and speaks with her about what he has seen and experienced. She responds (heavily paraphrased) "But that is how life is. Our job is to accept the next wave coming and enjoy it. Not to look back and try to have the last wave again, or to stop the wave that is coming. God does not send bad waves to us. Even if sometimes they are terrifying to behold."
