Escaping the banality

Why do we work?

Think!

For money?

What if I stuff your account with unlimited cash? Will you never wish to work again? Think!

For X?

What if you get that? Think!

OK. Take a break.

I had(and I am sure all of us have) read a story of an idler lying as usual in the late morning when an old stranger comes to him and reproaches him for his laziness and urges him to work.

The idler gets up and stretches his body, yawns and gazes glassily to him with sleepy eyes.

'OK tell me... Why should I work?', asks the idler as if he already knew what the next man would say.

'To earn money', replies the stranger curtly and shrugs his shoulder, content with the adequacy of his answer.

'What for?' The next question is cast with the self-assured expression resumed.

'You'll be able to buy cars with chauffeur, bangalow with servants and all sorts of luxurious things by money', the old man explains the obvious with a tone of irritation.

'Then?' The tramp enquires with widened eyes in the anticipation of the expected climax as if he too had read the story like us thousand times in his life.

'Then what! You'll have position and power. You'll have people. Then you'll not need to work anymore. It'll be done by others and you'll be able to sleep all day long', retorts the old stranger.

'This is precisely what I am doing', says the man and lies down again covering his face with his blanket.

Moral of the story: Working is useless. It is like holding your nose the other way round.

CLICHE' CLICHE' CLICHE' !!!

I KNOW. Even your response is a cliched one.

So, why should we work? We are back to square one. After all it makes no sense to run only to rest. It is ridiculous! But this is what I see all around me. The whole service sector is taking pains to make life easier for others and the whole manufacturing sector is striving for others' comfort and consumption. So whose life is being made better? Noone's coz every one has his/her own cross to bear. Each one of us is slogging his/her ass off for someone we dont know. A software engineer writes code for some unknown client he/she has hardly seen or wishes to see. Though we know that somewhere someone is also toiling for us but it gives us no particular pleasure. Everything gets neutralized and we are hardly better off than our ancestors. In many ways we are rather worse. All our boasting and bragging about modernity is nothing but empty and hollow vanity. We sleep less and we sleep less soundly.

There is an inherent flaw in the whole concept of work then. What is it?

As far as I can see it, though I am going to say nothing new, as long as we work to achieve an ends, it is worthless.

Work should be done for its own sake. All 'after alls' are illusory because they ignore the joy of the journey and focus only on the destination. The idler doesnt enjoy the ride in a full circle and condemns the futility of it. The whole idea of 'cause and effect' and its extravagent application in our everyday life is what makes the whole thing nonsensical.

Actually we work to give an expression to our beings. It is the expression of our profoundest convictions and most tenderly cherished emotions. It integrates us with ourselves. It gives us our own identity.

Krishna says in Geeta: YOGAH KARMASU KAUSHALAM (Skill in action is yoga)

It is as essential as breathing. It keeps us alive. The death starts creeping in our soul when we sit idle. We need to renew us, rejuvenate us, revitalize us every moment. Inactivity and boredom is the mother of all deadly ideas which spread nothing but virus of pestilence in the surroundings. In the atmosphere of inanities and banalities mind never grows up and decomposes to dust even before blooming to its fullest. Life has a dynamic, a 'yang' feature along with the static, a 'yin' aspect. We need to free ourselves from the overpowering stagnation and dullness around us. We need to escape from the inanities and banalities of life. We need to change and we need to bring about change where we live. And we do it for no extraordinarily great reasons. We do it to make our life meaningful. Meaningful for noone else but to ourselves. We do it for our growth. Growth of our own personality. The other benifits of work generally rumored are baseless and product of ignorance and misunderstanding.

We have to think to say something new coz repetition makes the word meaningless and strips the sentence of its effect, its power. It dehumanizes both the speaker as well as the listener.

We have to do something new to revive ourselves and to recreate the world we live in. We do not do it for leading a life of rest and repose after 20 years but to provide essence to each passing moment. It is a constant struggle of life against death, till death.