Why should we work?

Why should we work?

We humans, when not unconscious, spend more time working or in education than doing anything else. Why? Do we work so that we can buy pleasures when we have time off? Do we work so we can achieve money and consequentially status, which makes us more desirable mates? Do we work because we are brought up with the idea that it is our duty and function as a member of society? Or do we work in the hope of reaching self-actualization?

 

"Work", as we know it today, is essentially there to uphold the concept that "money makes the world go round". It is there to feed the greed of power hungry individuals, from pharaohs to kings to slavers to popes and presidents. The problem is that 'work' is tied to money - a man-made mechanism of exchange that is highly controllable by institutions and those who have a lot of it.

          But that’s not the truth, the truth is however that work can never be measured in the terms of money nor can it be attached to it. “Work”, is something that builds up the character and illuminates the secret chambers of your subconscious mind. “Work” finds the answers to the questions your soul has been searching over long period of time. We are all aware of the fact that we all work to achieve something, may be name, fame, wealth, pleasures, and fulfilling unfulfilled desires. But that’s just a mere illusion…. 

The goal of mankind is knowledge. Pleasure is not the goal of man, but knowledge. Pleasure and happiness come to an end. It is a mistake to suppose that pleasure is the goal. The cause of all the miseries we have in the world is that men blindly think pleasure to be the ideal to strive for. After a time man finds that it is not happiness, but knowledge, towards which he is going, and that both pleasure and pain are great teachers, and that he learns as much from evil as from good. As pleasure and pain pass before his soul they have upon it different pictures, and the result of these combined impressions is what is called man's "character". If you take the character of any man, it really is but the aggregate of tendencies, the sum total of the bent of his mind; you will find that misery and happiness are equal factors in the formation of that character. Good and evil have an equal share in moulding character, and in some instances misery is a greater teacher than happiness.

We say Newton discovered gravitation. Was it sitting anywhere in a corner waiting for him? It was in his own mind; the time came and he found it out. All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in your own mind. The external world is simply the suggestion, the occasion, which sets you to study your own mind, but the object of your study is always your own mind. The falling of an apple gave the suggestion to Newton, and he studied his own mind. He rearranged all the previous links of thought in his mind and discovered a new link among them, which we call the law of gravitation. It was neither in the apple nor in anything in the centre of the earth.

Like fire in a piece of flint, knowledge exists in the mind; suggestion is the friction which brings it out. Suggestion that leads to work which is finally followed by more suggestions and work gradually walking towards the infinite knowledge. Thus the term “work”, when defined in its widest sense means we are working all the time. I wrote this piece; that’s work, you are reading it; that’s work, you are breathing that’s work.

SO, we see that work is everywhere. It is the basic spiritual need that has to be fulfilled.

In the words of Swami Vivekananda, “Neither money pays, nor name, nor fame, it is only your character that can cleave through the adamantine world of difficulties”