The Hindu Business Line : Does work make you feel empty & confused?

Work – an overworked but underperformed four-letter word. Work is a millstone or shackle to most of us, keeping freedom away from us, a punishment or stick that has to be unwillingly endured for the end-of-the-month reward in the form of wage.

Wait, work can be more than a job, says a new book by Thomas Moore. Work can be ‘an activity or a group of activities that gives you a sense of meaning and purpose,” he assures in A Life at Work ( www.landmarkonthenet.com).

We tend to focus on literal concerns such as pay, product, and advancement, whereas developments in your work life deeply affect your sense of meaning, writes Moore. “Doing what you love and having relationships at work that help you as a person can give you feelings of peace and satisfaction at home and in the family.”

With modern technologies like e-mail blurring the borders between work and home, the link between fulfilment at work and happiness at home is more important than ever, the author observes. Rather than solving the problem of work at a purely practical level – through new training, a different career, or a fatter paycheque – get to the bottom of your frustration, he urges.

Frustration commonly manifests as a feeling of getting nowhere. “Many people believe that you should always be getting somewhere, that you should always be on the ‘up’ escalator, moving forward in life.” But sadly, ‘people at the top of the ladder can also feel stalled.’

Quite dangerously, failing to find adequate work, people can “turn against themselves and go looking for a job that has no challenge for them, pays them little, and offers no future. They punish themselves for not succeeding by ensuring that they won’t succeed.”

Again, if you work at a job that contradicts your ethics, you are divided, cautions Moore. A simple and timeless prescription from the Bhagavad Gita is that you can win your freedom by being karma-yogic; that is, by doing your duty to your best while at the same time not being attached to the fruits of labour. As if in affirmation, a chapter title in Moore’s book reads, ‘To work is to pray.’

Doing work that has no soul is the great hidden malady of our time, he rues. A life work may not be a particular job, occupation, career or a special role, explains Moore. Be open, therefore, to the possibilities and resist the temptation to make a closure before your life runs out.

Guides Moore, accordingly, that to mature as a person, you need to take time sorting through yourself, resolving the mistakes and failures that have marked your progress and refining the raw material of your emotions and jagged relationships.

You can fashion a rich, multifaceted life that doesn’t feel fragmented or broken, the author urges, in conclusion.

“Life is rich, and you will taste that richness when you stay close to the dynamic that is your life work.”

A book that can cut through all cluttered notions about work.

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com