Until Death Shall We Work

I have heard over the years about finding fulfillment through a career. Having a title like account manager, communications director, CEO, etc.; there are a vast amount of titles and we become known for our titles instead of for who we really are. We make ourselves sound important. We belong to a group, called a company or a corporation, with a mission to somehow make a profit. We struggle, sometimes at odds with other groups with a similar mission. We yield to group identity. We battle and struggle and fight the good fight. We go into meetings, write up orders, and take numerous phone calls … now we are even more alienated from one another through the use of technology. We could be scientists and technicians and doctors and lawyers, and work in the media … but when we come to our grave, what does it all mean?

Photo by Alex Kotliarskyi on Unsplash

When our bodies are cold and we have breathed our last breath and we look back on our life, I have heard there are very few who wish they would have worked more. No matter what we are doing work does not bring ultimate fulfillment – only a relationship with God does. When we meet God, will we hold out our hand and say I am a doctor/lawyer/engineer/banker/financier/politician/general? Maybe, but my guess is we will bow our head and say I am glad to be home, I am your child and my heart longs to be with you and I hope I am welcomed (as we will be).

It is very clear. Stop. Change. Be. This is the message we need to learn. How we choose to spend our time shows what our priorities are – how do you spend your time? With my ingrained work ethic, much of mine is still spent working as I am a 'work' in process.

'Work' is a funny term. It didn’t used to be called work. It used to be called living. One didn’t used to divide up one’s life between work and leisure. One wasn’t considered fun and the goal of the other. All was living.

There is then no such thing as work any longer. It becomes living when what you are doing does not provide a living for yourself, but is living unto itself. The land chooses us who it will support. We do not possess the land. “Imagine no possessions … I wonder if we can.” (John Lennon) We, in our attempt to carve out pieces of land to live on have, again, expropriated this concept.

We are all and each of us blessed with talents. God has gifted us with the desire to create, to expand our minds, to explore our worlds within and without. It is how we approach these desires that make the difference. We can view them and respect these gifts as sacred and offer them back into the service of God and into the service of one another, succoring and uplifting. Or we can choose to ignore the sacred and the desire to explore and create as a gift and offer them in service to ourselves, for our own gain and/or for the fulfillment of our own appetites (which are never satiated). One is in the service of God, the Divine, the Sacred, while the other is in the service of the ego, the self. The one leads us to create a heaven on earth, the other to a hell, where man is pitted against man and the talents so abundantly blessed with are put into the service of one against another, or even against God. One path leads to joy, the other to desolation and desperation. Where should we choose to place our focus?