More than Work

Being away from your known and familiar ecosystem is usually refreshing. But, if you are away often enough you will see that 'your' city and the rest of the world is not much different afterall. It's the same struggle for meaning. Don't get me wrong...I am not talking in some etheral religious sense but from a very mundane perspective - from the perspective of what a Job means to a man and woman anywhere in this world.

People spent so much time at work. In fact they spend a good deal of their lives at work. Surely for something as important and central as this, there is more than just money and survival involved.

Do people sense themselves while at work doing whatever that they are supposed to do? Do they feel alive at work? Can they see a larger connection and inter-relatedness of the work they do and the world around them? Do they feel that they are making a difference?

I suspect they don't. It seems to me that the more man becomes the focal point of industry the more distant he goes from feeling a sense of worth from his toils. Work de-humanizes. It degrades the natural energy and creativity inherent in a human being. It reduces a supreme creative being into a number.

The solution? A Job should not be work. It should be a calling. Anything less is a tragedy.

A manager should be a path-finder and a meaning-builder. Anything less is a catastrophe.