Giving up

Most of the time when we give up, we are really just putting things on hold, even though we do not realize it at the time. The things we give up on, be it education, boys/girls, jobs, location, sport, anything other than our life itself, will most likely be revisited in a new environment when we are ready and prepared to take it on. Even life itself takes on this trait of becoming worthwhile some time after we have given up on it, so long as it is still there. There is so much that can seem unattainable, at this point in time and forever, that the future reveals to us, as simple and easily achievable. There are many people that have come out of jail and made a great life for themselves, and there are many people who had a traumatic childhood who now have a great lifestyle full of love and joy with all they could have wanted and all they believed they could never have, and there are plenty of entirely talentless actresses and other creative professionals who have made it to the big time proving that anyone can do anything.

Work and Respect

So much of our time is spent working that it becomes a sort of identity for us. It becomes who we are, we can sometimes find ourselves thinking in ways that relate to our jobs. And when we meet someone for the first time, it is not uncommon for them to ask “what do you do?” and not only is it accepted that we understand that they are asking about our job and not the way we cook or watch TV or play sport, it is also acceptable that they make small but significant assumptions about our personality and who we are based around what we do to make money. While these assumptions may be true in some cases, they are generalizations. While we may spend a significant part of our time working, particularly if we work full time, our job does not define who we are, or how we interact with the world. While we try to choose a job that suits who we are, the reality is that many of us just fall into the positions, we do what our parents did, or we do what we got the marks to do, or we do that job that we just happened to be offered when we were between jobs. All in all most people work so that they may have money, and they are not bankers, or cleaners, or teachers, or doctors or train drivers, they are all just people.

Individuality and Conformity

We strive for individuality, yet we do so much to achieve conformity. We long to be ourselves, separate from everybody else, yet we long to be accepted and to belong. Belonging is difficult. While it seems to be learnt through high school, when people become gangsters or emo’s or popular bulimic or sporty jock or looser, and transformed through the workforce, where people become, secretary, cleaner, tradesman, apprentice, boss, office slave or looser. Throughout its lifetime belonging holds an unusual mix of conformity and separation. It needs its groups and differences otherwise we would have nothing to conform with and belong to. If the gangsters and the emo’s got along, there would be an outcry from both sides, because belonging to a select group, requires people that don’t belong. If everyone belonged, it wouldn’t feel so special. But if there was no one else just like us, we would feel alone, we would be outcast, by everyone, we would be the looser. Or become so famous, that we start the trend, and we are no longer alone or outcast, we become just like everyone else, because they would be like us.

Jobs and purpose

There has been many complaints by employers that people, the young generation especially, but all of us, are not being loyal to the company we work for. Many of us are sifting through job after job, trying to find one that suits us just right. Although to most of us it is obvious that if the work place were more loyal to us we would not seek other employment. If that job we had at a fast food place when we were in high school offered to pay us at a rate that we could live very comfortably on, we would have stayed much longer. And if they had offered a percentage of their profits, well, even a tiny percent would be millions. But they always like to keep that money for someone else. So we move on, although a great many of us would have moved on anyway, in the search for something more. Something that made us feel useful. Perhaps we should not blame all the companies of the jobs we had to quit because the money and conditions were crap. We should thank them for helping us to move on to greater things. Naturally we would if we knew what those greater things were, if we were able to feel like we accomplished something, like we have a purpose, but we are still looking.