Years of modern philosophical constructs surrounding our description of life have now made the soul a commodity to be maximized. The work of our hands and hearts have now become mechanisms for profiteering and our deepest nature is up for sale. It is said that the average person will have over five careers in their life time. These are not just new jobs but actually changes in how one configures their life around vocation and job issues. It is clear that for those who define themselves primarily or narrowly around the weight a job title or position offers may indeed find themselves without an identity. Rapid shifts in global economies now make career planning and company loyalty a crap shoot at best and a game of voodoo darts at worst. It is as if we are ask to define ourselves around a vapor and then wonder why we feel so adrift and without a core self.
To replace our career with our life involves a significant reorientation surrounding how we name and embody our decisions in life. In decades past it was expected that one would move to wherever their company ask them to re locate. It was also clear that retirement in the company you started out in or engaged in one’s 20’s very well might be where you ended up. Our parents and grandparents experienced this phenomenon. This kind of experience is nearly laughable at this point. However, people are not laughing. They are hunkering down even more into the soil of career as a source of identity but are doing so with a much more self aggrandizing sense about the search. If companies are going to be ruthless then so will employees. Loyalty to company goals and ideals is a thing of the past.
This kind of loyalty came natural to post WW I & II veterans who knew how to obey and hungered for a better world. The promises of industrialism and now technology and big business were tantamount to earlier forms of manifest destiny which brought Pilgrims to American shores and caused many to suffer for a better world in the here and now.
Unfortunately that better world was built upon an erroneous understanding as to the worth of the human soul. Not all things can carry with them a price tag. Much of life is gift plain and simple. In many ancient cultures, the idea of gift is written into the manner in which people groups communicate their worth and respect for one another. As we lose the concept of gift and the blessing of its exchanging, we begin to grow cynical as we then begin to wonder why no one sees our intrinsic worth.
As we replace our career with our life it is clear that the word ”our” is essential in this redefining. To find ourselves we must indeed work out that process in & with a set apart group of people who likewise desire to gift their lives to others. Could it be that the very nature of life transcends career and the degree to which we set the depth of our being down into this soil is the degree to which we are tossed about by every wind of change? We live in the climate and milieu of technological capitalism. This is a pervasive ambient presence that permeates all we do. From i-Pods to Game Boys, we are all hooked up to some form of leisure technology that feeds our interests and need for fun. This way of being means that we are constantly looking for things to buy to fulfill us. We consume not just for certain goods like milk and bread but clothing and music that reflect our deepest reflections on how we believe the world should or does operate. Thus, our consumer purchases become one of the few ways we can express ourselves. To replace our career with our life we must redefine our very purposes on this planet. Are we here merely to produce and consume? Is the most important thing about this life the material world and all its benefits? To make this shift we must move ourselves out of the center and place ourselves into a new hub and new center. That pivot point is community.
No comments:
Post a Comment