Never gonna be

One and a half months into my new job. I think I have figured out a few things.

1.   All work is the same.

It is a curse that started ever since the time of Adam. As John MacArthur mentioned, before the fall, man were florists and did flower arrangement. After the fall, man became farmers.

2.  Work is better than no work.

Although work became cursed, having work is still better than having no work. Consider the curse of Cain. He was made to become a wanderer to roam the earth. People will hunt him down and  kill him. Think for a moment. Why do you think Cain lamented that his punishment is too great to bear? Why will people be after his head?

I’d  like to think that Cain’s punishment is not so much about sending him on an eternal holiday. His punishment was to be forever deprived of cultivating the land, as was his day job. He is forced to become a wanderer, to live off the land wherever he could. And of course, people will kill him whenever they see him. Who likes parasites.

3.  Work does not guarantee happiness.

My theory is, we work for food. If we do not need food, then we no longer need to work. Anyway, that is another story.

Work brings money, money buys food, hence we are happy. But work in itself cannot make you happy, unless the following conditions are met:

a) Your work has a clear correlation between effort and reward. The more you work, the better your reward.

b) Your work gives you some level of autonomy. You feel like you are in control of things, be it of its  success or its peril.

c) Your work has just the right amount of complexity. Too complex – you’ll get stressed and feel like an idiot. Too easy – you’ll get bored and feel depressed.

Malcolm Gladwell was right on all three counts. (a) is true if you work in a job that has no correlation whatsoever between effort and reward, such as jobs that reward you based on seniority alone. (b) is true, as everyone likes to be their own boss. (c) is true, because if I pay you RM10,000 a month to become a toll booth operator, you’ll go crazy and still be miserable.

4.  Make one wrong career choice during your young and impressionable years, and it becomes almost irrevocable.

If only I had made a different career choice 9 years ago, things would  have been very much different. I could  have been anything I wanted to. But now, there can only be acceptance as to “how big” I can ever be.

But that’s alright. It’s ok with me.

 

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