For a Living
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” - Oscar Wilde
Tell me. What do you do for a Living?
I’m eager to know. Because I don’t think what we do for a Living necessarily is our “job”, or even our “profession”.
I was thinking about this one morning, discussing with Jizo-Sama regarding the titles we take on willingly, or don’t allow ourselves to take on. That’s a whole OTHER post. But it sparked something in me about the fact that we label ourselves all the time, but almost always about our job or profession. Joe is a plumber. Sue is an Administrative Assistant. Mr. So-and-So is an Attorney, and Ms. So-and-So is a Graphic Designer.
But that’s not really what we do for a Living. That’s what we do for existing. For bill-paying. Some of us are lucky enough to have jobs that would qualify as “living”, or even get to do their preferred “living” actions within the confines of their job. Perhaps Mary Smith loves to write, but does it within her annoying Copywriter job. She could probably ditch the other aspects of her job, but it allows her to do one thing she LIVES to do all the time.
But the majority of us put up with corporate world in order to Live a certain way, to Do certain things. They rarely have anything to do with concepts we associate ourselves with, and even more often these days, have little to do with what we studied in school.
I find it interesting that we ask a seven year old what they want to BE. They are allowed to BE anything. When children get older, we ask them what they want to DO. Now we have narrowed it down from dreams to interests and hopes. At adulthood, we don’t even deal with the term “want” anymore. What DO you do?
That’s like asking: What do you do now that you’ve given up your dreams and interests?
I’m reminded of Fight Club where Tyler says, ”You are not your job.” I am not my job, but I willingly take on those labels specifically when people ask me what I do for a living. But in reality, that says so very little about me. In fact, it says near to nothing.
So I asked myself: what do I do for a Living? Not my job, but my dreams and joys. What do I do to experience life? What would I call myself?
Thinker. Dancer. Writer. Blogger. Singer. Lover. Pennsic-goer. Reinactor. Traveler. Seeker. Retail Therapist. Activist.
So what is it that you do for a Living?
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I am a linguist of sorts, I guess. I am as fascinated with language at the level of computer/human interaction as I am with that of high-level science or philosophy or other such academia being filtered into more accessible terms.
At least, that tends to dominate my free thinking time. The majority of my regular free time is taken up with games, I would say. The label “gamer” definitely applies.
i always think of myself as being and “doing” happiness. i like to dance, i like science and philosophy, but those things really don’t seem to be the central things…ever since i was a senior in high school i figured out that i wanted to be committed to happiness and focus on that as my real job, or mode of being. thanks dalai lama!
life is really cool, and even all the sucky stuff is cool because it reminds you that you exist! i think that, if you don’t expect anything from anyone or the world, not in a defeatist or nihilistic way, but simply in a realistic and humble way, you’ll be happy. don’t ever take anything or granted, so when you lose it you won’t regret that you didn’t savor it, you’ll know you did what you needed to do, and will aimply be glad you got whatever good things you had. suffering exists, of course, but taken the right way it’s not as hard as i think most people make it.
life is not something that anyone deserves or should have… so we should all be happy we have this opportunity. and if bad things happen, so what? why did we expect perfection? all we can really do is try to control ourselves, be kind to people, be smart and be HAPPY! and really, i think this attitude simply creates more happiness for oneself, draws you to other great people and makes life very, very easy.
having a strong mind, and always knowing how awesome the universe is…trying to learn as much about it, and oneself… that’s living. that’s what it means to be fully engaged with the world.
so, occupation? happiness.