We work for money or what?

As I woke up today, I found it incredibly hard to wake up my mind which still felt the dizziness provoked by a 5-hour long mentoring session yesterday's night. The day definitely put me into a ton of stress. And the first sign in my body when I first encountered that thing called "stress" was strangely, hyperactivity. For sure, I felt tired, but there seems to be a constant stream of thinking and energy dedicated right to the root of that stress, w-o-r-k. We work for our whole life for many things, for sure that's what everyone says. However, it is an assumption for someone who has just joined the labour market like me that, money acts so well as an incentive to push people to continue working and feeling like they truly want to work hard. For me, again as a new comer to this game, I find it a conundrum that people can work for 8 hours per day for 5 to 6 days per week, then bring their work back home to continue working as well. As it seems to me that I can only handle half a day in the office (x 3 days) and at max 3 hours per week of private service for my client(s). That already felt very very enough for me, sometimes too much if I happen to want to spend more time reading, learning, and working on other interests of my life. Yet, somehow, people can do much more than me, with payments much lower than what I ask. At the other end of extremity, there are those who dare to ask for so much, and yet be able to do so little, or do something so big yet empty. All of these paradoxes led me to ask myself a fundamental question: can we ever get an occupation which we truly feel satisfied with, physically and spiritually?

I did unstructured interviews with quite many "professional" adults and usually got answers that lied more on the pessimistic side. However, the spectrum of pessimism is wide and there shouldn't be just one way to look at this picture. The most pessimistic ones were like, no one liked their job, we do it just for the money. Sure they have a point, everyone expects incentives in return for the efforts they have put in. However, I'm not convinced enough by such a single-minded theoretical lens: how about things, values that go beyond the materialistic? How about the rewards and values that we, as humans, uniquely demand? As I moved on to another group of people who have joined the workforce for quite a long time: family. Here, we should be cautious as I interviewed my family members as well, which may cause bias in data collection somehow. This time, the answers seem to make a bit more sense to me: the work is not only for earning money to afford materialistic demands, but also to nurture and protect the social bonds that we have created and formed with our close people. A father might say he works to afford good education for his children. A mother, to take her family to buy stuffs without minding the budget of her wallet all the time. I recently earned my first sum of money, which is a pretty decent amount for one's first jobs, so I took my smaller siblings to eat out a bit too generously. Yesterday, when I checked my bank account, suddenly most of the money just evaporated. That was the first shock of my life. I didn't feel depressed, but honestly did reflect on cutting back expenses in the following month. At the same time, I felt strangely motivated to work harder and earn more, so that I could take my little siblings out without minding about my wallet. That's the moment I realised maybe when it comes to earning money, I'm not that different from my parents who I once considered money-greedy and workaholic. Finally, there are adults who have the jobs that fit them spiritually, i.e. those occupations may directly link to their interests, allow them the time to also accommodate other interests of their life, satisfy a huge part of their identity; yet, they stressed, they usually compromised their monthly incomes for those external luxuries. This implies if they had chosen to do jobs they didn't quite enjoy, they could have earned much more. 

There seems to be two constants that kept popping up in those conversation: money and something else (like satisfaction, enjoyment, or fulfillment). This led me to another critical question in the occupational life: which one is more important? This is the question I've been attempting to answer since I was 14 years old, dreamy, quiet, and a bit too brainy for that age. When I think about that self of mine now, I usually feel a strange sense of detachment, as if I's looking at a completely different person from a third-person lens, not myself. That girl usually pondered upon her future, feeling especially anxious about whether we would be able to build the life, way too big of a life she subconsciously desired at that age. When it comes to a big life, most people or examples she somehow knew about were tied with the perception of having a big fortune, i.e. a lot of money. Thus, she wrestled with the belief that those who have a lot of money are unable to be happy, which means if she wanted a big life by having a lot of money, she must accept unhappiness. Alright, I can't say that is completely wrong. However, it shouldn't be completely true neither. As I grew up, I gradually grew out of that perspective. There are hundreds of versions of a big life, not just one that looks like a posh car, a big house, and money to flex. Moreover, the kind of a big life I seem to have wanted doesn't even look like money-hoarding, more like something which I must navigate carefully in order not to end up being broke. Writing this sentence down honestly feels both ironic and funny to me. Somehow, reality has shown me that being capable doesn't always make one a successful lad in this society; sometimes, the other way around happens with the most incapable people climbing to the top with their magical tricks I can't let myself learn. But then, we perhaps should come back to our original question and fix it up a little bit: for an individual, does getting rich by all means or living a life satisfactorily and meaningfully more important, in a society that still rewards heavily wealth, obedience, fame and face, and the pretentious? 

"Coming to a new place

I have a new king

a king that never shows up:

his palace is my mind. 

Of course, I have new rules

rules that an adult like me should not break

“If you want to live well in this kingdom”

the king reminds me

whenever he detects a desire for breach: 

“You must be successful

you must be rich

you must be powerful 

and you must do it quick!”

I asked him: “Why?”

“Do all before you are sick!”

he replied.

What a philosophy

that a novice like me cannot grasp

so I asked other adults

if they can explain for me

but their speeches of philosophies 

last even longer:

How to succeed

How to earn lots of money

How to gain authority

How to do all of them so quick. 

Perhaps I will get sick

even before I get what they mean." - College application's personal statement, 2023.

Maybe, I am the innocent here, to even mind asking that question. After all, we mustn't blame anyone to chase money desperately since this social game is designed so meticulously to push people into that rabbit hole if they don't hold themselves grounded enough for just one milli-second. It is a systemic issue, not necessarily a problem since a problem implies the existence of active problem-solving - there is no attempt to find a solution because there seems to be no need for it. The decision to go after the plain and stiff money is regarded as equal as the choice to go after something deeper, more philosophically meaningful like satisfaction, spiritual growth, and life fulfillment. They are equal to a certain extent, even though we can't be blind in front of the reality that those who already had sufficient money from the beginning are freer to choose to follow those later needs to nurture their spiritual life. However, I would, for now, cling to the most simplistic assumption in the adult world: as adults, we can choose and decide the way we want to live, to work, to go through this impermanent path of life. As thus, for the questions posed earlier, we are also free to curate our own answer, and live true to it. Since to chase money or to cherish our human soul may not be as black and white as we have been trying to paint them as such. That may be grey or red, blue or yellow, or whatever innovative lens of thought one may come up with during the course of finding out the answer for themselves. 

by lynn ng.