I have great and constantly growing respect for the work of David St Lawrence who writes at Ripples: Post-Corporate Adventures. His writing about our modern workplace is frank and often not pretty. It reminds me of the times I go for hikes and discover a beautiful stone only to pick it up and see all the worms and bugs crawling around beneath it. I’ll admit that there are times when I enter into a state of denial and think his experiences and outlook can’t possibly be accurate…I mean, are workplaces really that bad? The answer, like most everything else in life, is complex: yes and no with plenty of shades of gray between.
David’s recent post, If you are employed, I am writing from your future…, is an uncompromising reminder that each of us who are employed by a company or non-profit must take care of our own career. That even goes for us twenty- and thirtysomethings. I like this particular quote from David:
Once you take charge of your life and stop expecting someone else to look after you or tell you what to do and when, you may just find that you are enjoying life again and are looking forward to the future instead of dreading it.
Regardless of whether we’re ready to take on our own “post-corporate adventure,” this is sage advice for us to consider. It’s a message of hope for today as well as tomorrow. Each morning that we’re blessed to open our eyes to a new day has the possibility of adding to our knowledge and wisdom. Even on those days when it seems like it would be easier to just hit the snooze and sleep, the ideal of soulful work prods us to peer through the apparent drudgery to the greater meaning. Maybe that meaning is connecting the drudgery to something bigger like building the necessary street cred to start our own business. That’s for each of us to define.
And if we wake to discover that we’re in a soul-numbing job within a soulless organization and the drudgery is unbearable…well no one gets to play the victim here. Taking charge of our work and our life means taking risks, for sure. It also means we get to take on a richer, more human existence.
Chris. You are staying right in the tension and that's a good thing, but believe me, I understand how hard it can be to wait for the next door to open.
A couple more good questions based on what you wrote might be:
"What is the personal meaning I want your work to have?"
"What approach to my work do I believe will generate personal meaning?"
"What will it take to live this meaning?"
I know these are the kinds of questions that can take a long time, sometimes years, to answer, but of course that's what makes them the best, richest kind of inquiry.
Eleven years ago I was really struggling with my own professional work. It felt completely futile. I was out there in organizations trying to
"drive fear out of the workplace." But I was getting pretty depressed and angry about it because the results were often meager and the work was all uphill. Off in the mountains for a few days, carrying my frustration like a heavy pack, I asked this question of myself, "So what is the spiritual meaning of my work?" I had no sooner put the question down on a page of my journal than these words sprang into me: "Silence, Beauty, and Timelessness are the real change agents in the world." I was stunned -- and still am. I interpreted the message to mean simply, "Dan, stop trying to BE the agent of change -- instead be the channel for the REAL agents of change." And that moment did change things. I had received something from "outside," from a Silence that indeed was speaking to me--and through me. It was humbling and empowering and it started something working in me that has worked ever since.
Indeed, the approach is the thing...
Thanks for asking the questions, Chris, and thanks for listening to my story!
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