Have you ever found yourself being introduced to someone and immediately asking them a question like "So what do you do for a living?" If you think about it, it's kind of a strange thing to ask someone. It's a great ice breaker and it can at least guide you towards something to talk about. But what are you really learning about that person by finding out how they go about making money? Sure if you come across a contract killer then it's probably saying a lot about their personality, but in the end for them it's just a job. Is it really all that different from someone who has decided to spend forty hours under florescent lights staring at a computer monitor or the guy who owns a restaurant? Then again, maybe in certain situations the job does a very good job of summarizing who that person is or at least who they are willing to be for money. Finding out what someone's does for work doesn't necessarily speak to who they are. If you really wanted to know about a person then you could ask them "So what do you do for life?"
Of course if you're anything like me and were asked that question I would have a hard time answering it. In fact I have a difficult time answering my friends when they ask me what I do for fun. Sometimes I wonder if our forms of entertainment are compromises as much as the jobs we tell ourselves that we need to take in the name of practicality. I watch television because I've always liked television. I read because I've always liked the different stories. Still, in a way they are both practical forms of entertainment given my situation, which itself isn't all that bad. Now I have no desire to scale K2 or sail around the world, but maybe I don't have the desire because it seems unrealistic and unlikely. First off, if I tried to climb K2 I would most likely die. I get winded climbing three flights of stairs at a mile high elevation. Add another 23,000 feet and my heart would probably explode from trying to force blood through my weakened body. I can't even imagine the person who would consider the whole prospect fun in any way.
Various people may ask you what your dream job would be. What would you do if there was nothing holding you back? The biggest thing holding us back is ourselves. It seems almost obvious when you think about. Sure in a lot of cases it could be money, geographic location, training, or family obligations that prevent us from dropping what we've settled for and going for what we want. To be honest some of those factors are there for a reason and in a way they hold us back from jumping off a cliff. On the flip side though I think it's very possible that we allow ourselves to be constrained by limitations. These could be self-imposed or put on us by others. Limitations could come in the form of expectations. For a lot of people there are set expectations that guide what they allow themselves to do or even think. I've talked about dreams and practicality before. Most people have to try and balance what they want and what they have to do. In some cases doing what's necessary overshadows everything. Still this may in fact be the only life we get and one has to question an entire existence spent doing things that don't make one happy. Maybe there is an afterlife where everything is sex and roses, but there is a good chance that this is it. So why not make the most of it before it's over?
Now I'm not saying that you can disregard everything except what makes you happy. The world just doesn't work that way. There are times when you have to put your head down and just get through it. For how long though? What's the point of working in a terrible job for thirty years, only to retire and die in your recliner a few months later? It reminds me of the horse from Animal Farm, trudging forward assuming that if they work hard eventually things will get better. Sometimes they do get better and the hard work is rewarded. More often than not though your only reward is being sent to the glue factory because there's nothing left to take.
I was thinking a bit about our society and how we move through it. From the ages of five to eighteen we're required to go to school and get an education. This education is designed to prepare us for either college for additional education or for entering the workforce. Let's say you go to college. The whole purpose there is to gather even more specialized knowledge. That knowledge is going to be essentially be used for one thing in today's world: to make money. That money will go into paying for our home and our food and whatever else we can think to spend it on. So is that basically saying that our entire education is built on the necessity of earning a wage? The five year old is being taught the alphabet so that eventually they can move onto math and from there understand that forty hours worth of work translates into X amount of money? Are our lives just a great big build up to an eventual paycheck? It makes our society seem like a half-realized idea.
We're a long way from doing something simply for the sake of doing it. I think part of the appeal of Star Trek is that they've managed to create a society that doesn't work because of money. Instead they work for the betterment of everyone. Now it's science fiction because it has aliens and space ships that travel faster than light, but I think the real fantasy is the world were mankind has figured out how move beyond where we are now and onto something greater. Here's a question to think about. Would you continue to do your job if they weren't paying you? Now assume for a second that you didn't actually need the money from your paycheck. Your home was already paid for. You and your family had enough food every day. Add to that you didn't have to live like a hermit and could enjoy life in much the same way you do now. Would you want to do the job you have now or would you go do something else? So when they ask that question about your dream job, that's how it should really be phrased. Is it something you'd do without pay because you love it? If that were the case then an answer to a question like "What do you do for a living?" would really have meaning.
