This week has been extraordinarily busy for me. Since I started freelancing 'officially' in my mind, I have been absolutely slammed with work and projects and requests...and I don't even have a website yet! Weird!
In his book, Small is Beautiful, E. F. Schumacher talks a lot of the ethics of work. He notices that there is a difference between working, and 'toiling.' A lot of time, modern economics relies on the idea of toil. We work hard, we need to be efficient! We need to work for the sake of work. In other words, work is toil.
He instead talks about a concept called 'Buddhist Econmics.' Buddhists look for meaning in what they do, so that the value of work is not lost on the human being, and the human spirit. Humanity was meant to work towards activities that express themeslves and their creativity. The economic outcome is that there is no way to 'limit' our work. All we can talk about is expanding, which clashes with the idea of actually thriving:
"The way in which we experience and interpret the world obviously depends very much indeed on the kind of ideas that fill our minds. If they are mainly small, weak, superficial, and incoherent, life will appear insipid, uninteresting, petty, and chaotic. "
I have been thinking a lot about the kind of work that fills my mind lately. It used to be that I took work that made me feel like I was working to provide something I didn't want to provide, and being someone, sometimes that I didn't want to be. I often left a job shortly after that. There's nothing as nice as financial stability...but there's also nothing quite like taking your own path in life. (And those two needn't be mutually exclusive.)
In the future, consider what work makes you happy? What work is a form of toiling? How can you cut back on toiling, to make room for creativity in your work? What projects make you happy? Which ones cause you stress with no benefit?
I am trying to work now for the sake of working well, and being creative. We'll see how far I get.
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