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Commentary: Even the Most Amazing of Jobs Have Their Moments of Drudgery!

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Yesterday, I wrote a somewhat lengthy post that focused rather substantially on about 40 years of working life, much of which turned out nothing like I visualized when I was younger.

What lies along this overgrown path?

While I was doing some paperwork today — a thing I really don't enjoy — I found my mind wandering to some of the many fascinating conversations I have had with people about their work, and some of the fascinating professions I have come across in my lifetime.

As I said, I really don't enjoy paperwork. However, I was amply qualified and could very easily have become an accountant.

And it got me to thinking about one of the things we ended up discussing at a so called ”work purpose” workshop back in the 1990's where a large part of the objective was trying to hone in on what a perfect kind of work might be, for each of the workshop attendees.

As I sat there, listening to people drone on about "not being happy at work," I remembered how the older members of my family (when I was in my 20s) grew up with the paradigm that such a thing as ”being happy at work” was not even a consideration in choosing a profession. You did what you were good at and got paid well for, you went to work and you got paid and that was the end of that. If what you were doing happened to make you happy, well that was just an unexpected bonus.

So getting back to that work purpose workshop, one of the things that became fairly clear was that even the people who were working that's something that made them feel truly joyful still had to deal with times and tasks that were boring and filled with drudgery.

What's my point here?

Well, I think we sometimes end up carrying around unrealistic expectations concerning ”how happy” and ”how satisfying” our work is supposed to be. I'm not entirely sure how we got sidetracked into this cultural paradigm that every single moment of our lives is supposed to be filled with joy and happiness — and I'm open to the possibility that I am just one of the Eeyores of the human species — but it strikes me as an unrealistic ambition.

The cynic in me thinks that maybe it was just a notion introduced by marketers to keep us eternally striving for something that could never be accomplished.

Does that make me sound pessimistic and negative? Or am I merely being realistic about the realities of life as it actually IS, rather than as our wishful thinking would like it to be?

The realist in me says that we may actually be doing ourselves a disfavor by becoming excessively fixated on this idea of happiness because it ultimately is an ambition that precludes us experiencing the full range of human emotions!

If you're just in a "happiness coma" all the time, what about the rest of this amzing human experience?

Just something to think about...

Thanks for reading, and have a great remainder of your week!

How about YOU? Do you think we have unrealistic expectations about "how happy" work can make us? Is it even the TASK of work to make us happy? Or just to make us MONEY, and to find happiness elsewhere? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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