David Fisher and Keith
Charles at work in Six Feet Under
What
happened to us ? Long time
ago our ancestors used not more than five hours a day on
what we now call "work": gathering food, building houses, making clothes and tools.
The rest of the day was spent talking, resting and
dancing. What a contrast compared to the 19th century
factory-worker who worked six days a week and twelve
hours a day! "Il
lavoro nobilitia l'uomo, e le rende simile alle
bestie": "Work can lift a man up but also makes
an animal of him", is the translation of this
Italian proverb. The doctor in the new hospital and the
slave carrying a heavy load are both working. But the
doctor can learn everyday something new, he realises that
he has things under control and is able to accomplish
difficult tasks. The slave has to do the same tiring work
again and again. How do we feel in our jobs, like the
doctor or the slave ?
Work
as a curse Adam was
punished by God with the curse " cursed is the
ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat
of it all the days of your life...by the sweat of your
brow you will eat your food" (Genesis 3:17-19). Most
cultures consider work (just like the Bible story) as a
curse to be avoided as much as possible!
There is something strange about work. If we wouldn´t
care about luxury, cars and beautiful houses there would
be no much need for hard work. But the more we put our
energy into material goals, the harder it is to realise
them. To meet our climbing expectations, we must work
harder, physically and mentally and use more and more
natural resources.
Work as pleasure Still work
does not need to be unpleasant. Working can be tough or
at least tougher than doing nothing but people can enjoy
their work and it can be the best part of their life.
Scientists in Italy have studied traditional communities
living in the Alps. These mountain people are happy
people. Why ? Because they don't make the difference
between work and spare-time. Although life is not easy
living in these mountains, the people in these villages
do not experience their heavy work as a burden. They feel
free, free in their work, they can do what they want,
they don't have a boss telling them what to do.
If your work is in a dark and dirty factory, even then
you can enjoy your work. How ? By trying to manipulate
and transform the opportunities even the simplest job
offers. That is the difference between happy and unhappy
people in their jobs. You can stay within the boundaries
of the given reality and become unhappy. Or you can try
to pass these boundaries and become happy. Even is your
work is dull, give yourself new goals, make your work a
game, more complex than it is. During World War II many
Jews practised this mental technique in prison. In order
to avoid madness they start counting the bricks in their
cells or start asking questions. What was this brick made
of, who made it, where did this man live etc. ? They made
the killing dullness into a game. They looked behind
their boundaries.
If you use your mental energy to achieve this you will
find out that you too are able to lose yourself in your
job (you feel part of a flow, you forget time) and you
will see your work as a result of a free choice.
BBQ
spare-time
The paradox of
spare-time Work has the potential to give people the
feeling that they are competent, it gives them
challenges. This make you feel happy, strong, creative
and satisfied. In spare-time many people feel sad, weak,
listless and dissatisfied. But whoever you ask, people
will always say that they want to work less and have more
spare-time !
What does this mean ? During work people give little
attention to their senses. They neglect the quality of
the immediate experience their job offers them and base
their motivation on the cultural biased stereotype of
what work ought to be for them. They consider work as a
burden, an obligation, an enemy of their freedom. So
therefore work should be avoided as much as possible.
But many people do not know what to do in their
spare-time. Ironically work can make you easier happy
than spare-time because work has goals, feedback, rules
and challenges which stimulate you to commit yourself to
your job, to concentrate and forget yourself.
Spare-time on the other hand is unstructured and asks for
a much bigger effort to be enjoyed. Hobbies which ask for
a certain skills and inner discipline can make spare-time
into what it is really meant for: re-creation. Most
people let the change go by to enjoy spare-time more than
their work.
The false
promise of the entertainment industry The
entertainment industry tries to help people to enjoy
their spare-time. But in stead of using our physical or
mental abilities, many people spent every weekend hours
in a stadium, looking at famous sportsmen and
sportswomen. In stead of making music themselves, we
listen to music of rich musicians. In stead of making art
we admire the paintings in the museum. In stead of acting
on our beliefs, we prefer to watch actors who pretend to
be in adventures and who seem to live exciting lives. In
stead of making our own webpages we only use our computer
to visit other webpages we didn't make...
Using your own skills leads to personal growth. Being
passively entertained leads to nothing. We waste our
energy for nothing, even more it tires us and discourages
us.
The solution Work and
spare-time can both be disappointing unless you take
control. Many jobs and leisure activities are not made to
make us happy and strong. They are only there to make
another person rich. If we do not resist this, it will
use up all our life-energy. But work and spare-time can
also contribute to our needs. You can learn to enjoy your
work and use your spare-time fruitful.
The future belongs not only to the learned women or men
who enjoy their work, but also to the one who has learned
to use the spare-time useful.
This article is
an extraction and revision based on the book: Flow:
psychologie van de optimale ervaring. by
M. Csikszentmihalyi. Amsterdam: Boom 1999
Visitors from
Holland and Belgium
can order this and other books:
