Doing

There’s more to business than money and there’s more to life than work. I’m a sucker for work though, bordering on being classified a work-a-holic by those who like to label others.

It’s not because I have an addiction to work, it’s because I love what I do. My work is creative, challenging, interesting and it gives me a great sense of satisfaction when things come together. The trick is to get the balance right, and find meaning and purpose from who we are - not what we do.

My father used to say that 95% of work was just that - work - and that the fun parts should only come when the work is done. While he got a lot of things right in passing parental wisdom down the family tree, I don’t buy into that kind of negative thinking. I’ve done a lot of different things in my time, and I’ve learnt that you can make anything enjoyable, with the right attitude.

When we push ourselves to try and catch up to others, the danger is that we aim to get our meaning and purpose from life in what we do. For guys especially, we generally take the measure of our success by our job, our wealth or social contacts. The first thing we usually ask another guy when we meet is “What do you do for a living?” Sure, it’s only natural to ask this but how often do we use the other guy’s reply to get a measure of his success.

I’ve got a lot of time for the rubbish men. These guys are lower down the social pecking order than me according to some, but as a rule, they’re great guys - always friendly, never short of a smile or a wave (or the “cussie-bro” raised eyebrows) - hard working and doing a great job. I just love it when all that crappy stinky stuff from the last week of living just disappears off my property, and only costs me a buck or so for the privilege!

A while back, when Political Correctness raised its ugly head in the USA, the rubbish men started calling themselves “Garbologists”! Excuse me? Guys, you’ve lost the plot. Be proud of who you are. There’s no need to dress yourselves up in poncy yuppy words. I hope you were only joking about this and didn’t meant it. Hmmm - America, late-1970s, OK you meant it!
The thing about doing things - doing work, doing business and just doing DOING is that there is no end to it. No matter what you achieve; no matter what you end up DOING, there’s always more to achieve, and more to do. It’s a bit of a drag, really, when you come to think of it.

One of the all-time greats at this living and doing thing was a guy called the Teacher (no, not THE Teacher, just the Teacher). They reckon the guy was pretty smart. In fact they called him the richest and wisest man on earth at the time, which was a few hundred years before THE Teacher. This guy learned quite a bit about this doing thing, probably becausein his heyday he had a few thousand people waiting on him day and night, including a truckload of wives too.

In his latter years, he scribbled down a few words for those coming after him to mull over. It doesn’t make uplifting reading when he starts off talking, to be frank. He’s got a pretty negative attitude to the whole living thing, considering that he owned half the world at the time and the other half (which the Queen of Sheba happened to own) travelled the world to come and see him. He would have to be considered a pretty reasonably successful dude.

This is how he gets started:

“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” What does man gain from all his labour at which he toils under the sun?
Ecclesiastes 1:2,3

Ouch! This DOING thing doesn’t sit well for the guy does it?

Without going into a truckload of quoting of him, he basically says that you’ve got something like three score years and ten, and then it’s all over, and you’re out of here. All your gold and stuff goes to the banker and you’re out of the game - any time He likes basically.

It takes a while to get to know the Teacher and what he’s really on about, but the clue that brings it all together is right at the end of his book of misery wisdom.

Here’s the nugget:

Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.
Ecclesiastes 12:13

Funny how after you’ve done a big brain-dump, you can just sit back and drop in a beautiful pearl of wisdom, eh? So after all his pontificating, he just slips in the big one - put a bit of respect toward the Creator or it’s all for nought.

That’s the VICTUS IN AMBITUS way too - pontificate as much as you like, but then get our priorities right, and definitely before the Chapter closes.