I can’t speak for anyone. I can only make sense of what I observe.
But throughout all the years I can always remember there being something that has irked me about modern work ethic.
For one, it is very often that I see the individual sacrifice life happiness for life security.
It is not our fault. We are all mislead to believe that the system we grow up in has been the system that has existed all along, and that it is the only system that was or ever will be.
We are barely five years old, sometimes younger, before we are placed into those “learning institutions,” and we learn to blindly accept that we will be attending these schools at least until we are 18 (the age most of us graduate high school). It is also reasonable to expect that we will spend another 4 years at a college or higher learning facility, making the total years of conditioned learning about 17 years total.
Conditioning is not always a bad thing. I am thankful that I have been conditioned on how to read, write, and do basic mathematics. I owe a tremendous debt to the knowledge I have received all throughout my public education.
But it did not come without its consequences.
One negative lesson we learn from public education is obedience and complacency. It diminishes our critical thinking skills – our ability to think for ourselves, and not regurgitate a thought process of someone else. In a way, we begin to sacrifice our identity as an individual for our prescribed role in the group.
The hurt doesn’t end there.
What is worse? We learn that work means pain.
School life is almost always a pain for a child. It does not only put limitations on the creativity of the individual, but creates an association between work and the grudges of: waking up uncomfortably early, following orders or getting ostracized, tedious mental exercise, and an overall numbing sensation towards life. It’s a type of prison.
But these are all things we have to do if we want to get a job – right?!
The truth is – it is reasonable to attend public education, and I could never in my right mind denounce it completely. But I have to acknowledge a brute fact: it is not for everyone. It doesn’t answer everyone’s questions to life. It doesn’t lead us all to a fulfilling career.
The reason I have come to dismiss my public education is simple – my will towards life is not compatible with the rigid rules that our current form of capitalism offers.
Modern day capitalism expects us to conform and sacrifice our individual freedom. But this isn’t what true capitalism is about.
True free market capitalism protects the individual’s free choice. It always gives the individual the option to voluntarily dismiss himself from the hectic industrial-commercialized world. It celebrates the entrepreneur, the artist, and the visionary.
A true capitalist society requires man to celebrate himself – to be productive with the compass of his own mind, and to be satisfied by the measure of his own subjective peace.
No professor can teach you how to do that. Man can only learn it by his or her self – through the eyes and observations of his or her own life experience.
And that is why my advice for building a career is based on only one major principle – build your career around your life, not your life around your career.
This shift in perspective leads to a more satisfying and more prosperous existence. Why? Because a better perspective lays the groundwork to a better course of action.
The difference between the visionary and the ordinary man is that the visionary can hold two pictures of the world in his mind at the same time. The first picture is how the world is, and the second is how he believes the world should be.
The ordinary man can not hold these two pictures independently. Instead, the ordinary man confuses what he takes for real with what is a figment. He is unsure. He is guided by this ignorance.
While ordinary man operates under a single blurred vision, the visionary can create independent views, keep them distinct, and learn to draw lines between visions clearly and comprehensibly.
The visionary takes life for what it is (Picture A), and sees how to make it into what he or she wants (Picture B).
Their desires do not blur the present moment. They are separate, independent, unattached, clear and focused.
Your career requires a certain set of conditions to take place in the future (Picture B). You have to decide what conditions are your highest values. Some of my preferred conditions include a flexible and relaxing schedule, as well as a method of production that I find fun, exciting, and deeply satisfying.
You don’t wake up in your dream world. Building a career takes time, planning and effort. You have to acknowledge the situation you are in now (Picture A) before you can understand the first step to building your life career.
It also takes trial and error. There is no great success achieved without the risks of failure. But neither the situation you are in now (Picture A) or the situation you want to be in the future (Picture B) are set in stone. They are constantly evolving and changing.
When one builds their life around their career they are living a life with a shaky foundation. Careers are not permanent things, and certainly not more important then life itself. Without first a healthy life, there are no careers.
So my final thought is to find out what you want from life before you decide what you want from your career. Too many people identify themselves with their job. They forget that they one time existed before they were put to work, and that there is more to life than just work. Find the root of your existence. Find your raison d’etre – your reason for being, and then take a message from our United States Army and be all that you can be.
