Post # 30 # Being, Belonging and Becoming

“Quality is not an act, it is a habit.” ARISTOTLE

Little things, despite their smallness, make the whole difference in our life, as in the saying goes that the largest ocean is made up of little drops of water. Without the help of nuclear and rocket technology, we can presume that little bit of our life — things we are or we do — can greatly change the quality of our living that is to enjoy all the possibilities of life. Knowing what is of significance can further accentuate these positive effects and thus more quality.

The Quality of Life Research Unit (University of Toronto) distinguishes three areas where we can identify the quality of life: 1. Being 2. Belonging 3. Becoming. So what are these things? Quite abstract it may sound, but there is no room for doubt, for these areas are what we come across everyday. The only thing we need is to be aware about them so that we can fine tune them for potential utilization.

• Being is what we are; it can be our physical and mental conditions, plus our sense of right and wrong. 
• Belonging is how we relate to our environment and the place we are a part of. 
• Becoming is the action that brings result — any kind of result that differentiates us from what we were then and what we are now; for example doing a household chore. 

These are the brief outlines. Life is what happiness is and it will be sheer lacking to discuss it in one go, whether in writing or speaking. All said, a subjective understanding of these things — being aware of life, having a place to muse upon the things that make us and our lives more meaningful and becoming a more ‘knowing’ person — fill some of the vacuum that life has created for humanity. We can start from the little things we are doing now.

Post # 29 # Job Satisfaction (not guaranteed!)

Work is worship?

Been out of action for quite a while, you see, the work pressure is too much to handle. We are used to the proverbial 9 to 5, but how would you react when you hear about a 5-to-9 job? That's exactly what I have been doing for the last two months. No time for concert, for friends, for birthdays, this and that. All I have got is this irritating job. Slogging out for fifteen hours a day is too much but it's how you save an income in trying times. Well, I'm tired but I'm not knocked out.

And this takes me to the eternal question of job satisfaction. So fortunate is s/he who has found the ideal meaning of life in the profession s/he is in. On the face, it might seem asking a lot from the reality, but we cannot simply do away with these luck and harm things. Malcomn Gladwell in his best selling Outliers outlines one of the prerequisites of a successful life: Working on the choice of our profession/hobby for ten thousand hours to grasp the finer nuances as well as to stay ahead of others. I doubt, with my kind of a mechanical job of error-checking, even two thousand hours of effort will yield but more cynicism of the people and their defects.

This will somehow explain about my exasperation. I have failed to see the goodness in other people. Even if I got a little heart to show I care, I'm tied up in official work which they always lace it with a poetic truth that it's professionalism. To hell with professionalism. I don't work for my life, but for my livelihood, and pragmatic considerations keep me away from going straight to my boss to tell him that he is taking more than he can chew from his boss again. I desperately want to know how he shits out all these craps but I can see he does not like it either but is more interested to keep the principles of professional safe and sound.

It's no use, grumbling and moaning over the blues. There are three really important things we need from our job:  a little bit of creative satisfaction, a little bit of some sense of accomplishment and a little bit of reward now and then for the services we are offering our employers. Otherwise it's best to update the CV in some known job sites.