Rethinking the narrative about career and life goals
When I was a kid, it was clear to me that my father really disliked his job. Aside from the many nights he didn’t see me before I went to bed — and the early mornings when I woke up and he was already gone — he would also explicitly tell me that he hated his job.
His dislike for his job became a sort of rallying cry between the two of us. After all, his father (my grandfather) hated his job as well. I came from generations of men with jobs they hated. As I approached college age, my father would advise me not to repeat these mistakes. He urged me to find what I love to do, and never settle for another line of work.
And to an extent, that made sense. As the old adage goes: do what you love, and you never work a day in your life.
But as I got older, and a few of my dreams slipped away from me, I was forced to look at things from a slightly different angle than the one that my father had shown me.
The Aim of a Life
In Vedic philosophy, there is a concept called Puruṣārtha. It translates as “object of pursuit” — but may people use it to talk about the purpose of life in general. According to this idea, there are four elements that make up a complete life. Those four elements are:
- Dharma — moral values, principles of conduct
- Artha — economic prosperity and professional pursuits
- Kama — pleasure, leisure, personal relationships
- Moksha — spiritual activity and values, the pursuit of liberation from dependence on material things alone for joy
A full life involves integrating all 4 of those things. Notice that I didn’t say balancing those things. In fact, many Vedic thinkers discussed how some of the concepts were reliant upon each other.
Because of how I was raised, and because of my dad’s explicit distaste for his job, I didn’t realize how much I thought everything was reliant upon Artha. To me, it seemed like the right job made everything else easier, but the wrong job would bring everything else crashing down.
While it’s certainly possible that a truly terrible job can derail your life, I’ve found that those are few and far between. For the most part, there are a few really awesome jobs, a few really terrible ones, and in the middle, there are a whole lot of jobs that are just…whatever you make of them.
Flip the Script
When I didn’t get my “dream job”, I begrudgingly took some advice that my wife gave me — though I wasn’t quite ready to hear it yet. I stopped looking for some mythical pre-packaged job that would just make me happy from day one. Instead, I began to look for things about my current job that provided opportunities for me to grow. And not just to grow professionally or monetarily, but to grow in all of the aspects involved in Puruṣārtha.
And once I did that — once I began to look for ways that my current job could enrich my life — I found them pretty easily. I found projects to get involved in, which provided me with skill development. I found people to work with that have become friends. I found ways to express my passions for teaching and writing that I previously only thought I could express in academia (my previous dream job). And I also learned to develop strong personal values, and adopt a more spiritual outlook.
That’s the thing about any kind of situation you’re in — be it a job that wasn’t your dream, a detour from your life’s planned path, or simply a bump in today’s road. There are things to find that can help you grow. Situations don’t enrich us on their own.
Jobs don’t fulfill us on their own. Relationships don’t provide us with joy on their own. It all takes our active involvement. We have to look for the things to appreciate in our situation, and then actively appreciate them. From the pleasurable to the stressful, and everything in between; put in the work of appreciation.
The Thing About Life
So as I look back on the mandate of my forefathers — to find work that I love — I’ve made a slight adjustment that’s made all the difference in my life. Rather than finding the work I love, I learn to love the work I find. Not every kind of work — some work just doesn’t suit me. But nearly all the stuff I get involved with, I can find some way that it can teach me, and help me grow in all life’s important dimensions.
As far as you know, you’ve got one life here. It’s highly unlikely that this life will arrange itself in such a way as to please you. That’s not how things work. Rather, you have to put in the work to appreciate and find joy in the life you have. It’s the work of each one of us, so get as good at it as you can.