Nov 14, 2020
Self-knowledge
The Meaning at Work
Faith, firm as a sword; Hope, wide as the world; Love, deep as the sea in everything we do, in every moment of our lives
I’ve just returned from a trip to the depths of my soul with Victor Frankl through the pages of Man in Search of Meaning. Barely arrived I would like to share a small thought about an interesting discovery I made thanks to a polarizing scrolling between LinkedIn and Victor Frankl’s book.
Without a doubt we search every day for meaning at work (and life). We look for a sign that will tell us were to go. We know we need that, we all know we need that. But regretfully sometimes we choose not to listen. Voluntarily we separate what we DO from what we ARE. Is it easier, more comfortable and feasible? Maybe.
Sooner or later we find with ourselves by doing what we have to do or by not doing what we have to do. We do that because we are relentless, unique, perseverant… we find ourselves, not with that “outsider me” but with that me that lies deep within and burns us (pleasantly) and calls us.
Sometimes we ask for directions because we are lost, sometimes we ask for directions due to insecurity. Sometimes we take risks and we lose ourselves and sometimes we stay still.
Meanwhile, at LinkedIn we discover that we have 37 hours per week to follow our dreams (or so I read). That chances are few, very few. That money is not the most important thing. That 80% of success is merely insisting. Without data I’m just a person with an opinion. A minimum change can be a great discovery. That if somebody gives me a chance I’ll make it happen. I don’t need someone to complete me but someone who accepts me completely. And that we can suffer less if we become responsible of our own mind… etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
And I keep going back to the book and hearing Victor Frankl whispering to my ear: ‘Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible’.
‘Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it’.
‘Don’t aim at success — the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success’.
And what I see is an even greater disassociation between mind and body working Monday to Friday 9 to 5 and the spirit that is turned off. And during the weekends I see an awakening of the spirit reminding us it lives in us just to be sedated one more week and another and another. Until finally, the spirit surrenders (or is it our deepest depths searching for inner union?) and tells us life is short, wake up!
Meanwhile we keep on asking for directions, searching for meaning and hearing hundreds of voices telling us where to go with phrases, thoughts, quotes that will help us find meaning. And we listen to them, but something’s missing.
At last the spirit invites us, not to stop doing what we are doing, not to catapult ourselves from where we are, not to stop listening to others, not to fly but for the sake of flying, not to search for something new or different or imaginarily better, but to unite what I FEEL and I AM with what I DO and THINK.
And then yes… fulfilment emerges and our life changes without changing what I THINK and what I DO but starts of filling up with LIFE. That is the moment when the meaning of work appears.
