Since many of you have assisted me in my previous history assignments, I thought you might enjoy helping me once again! I am interviewing people I respect on why they believe work is meaningful. So, why do you think that work in meaningful?
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4 comments:
Okay, Katherine, I'll try to give you a decent answer. I suppose I try to look at work as just another aspect of my life. God has called us to do everything to His glory, and so I approach my work with that perspective. If I'm supposed to be glorifying Him in everything I do, that means that even the most mundane tasks can be meaningful. Now I'll admit that I don't always succeed at having this attitude, but it is my goal and ideal.
Also, I realize that every day that I spend in this job is giving me more experience and getting me one day closer to my long-term goal of a teaching career. So everything I do at work is meaningful because it is preparing me for the future.
Hope that helps.
Okay, since I'm at work, but not really enjoying it too much today, I'll take a break and throw my two cents at your question. Agreeing with
Barb's answer, I'll add on from there. Work has been around since God put man here. God told man to work. He told Adam what his work should be in caring for the garden. Work has been around since then in various forms which have changed throughout history with societies and what was needed of people for those societies to function. So I guess I'd say that work is meaningful, because God intended for us to work and because work is necessary for societies to function and necessary in our current societies for people to make a living. That being said, I fear that people have become more and more obsessed with work in order to have more and more stuff because somehow those societies have led people to the world view that they deserve lavish lifestyles and fancy stuff. As humans have done throughout history, we've distorted something that God put in place as useful AND meaningful and even necessary and put our human "spin" on it and have made work less and less meaningful according to what God's intentions were "in the Beginning". We have a way of doing that over and over. On a personal note, although I'm currently doing what the world would call "real work", I find it somewhat meaningless because it takes me from my kids for more time than I like and the job that I feel is more meaningful in the care and raising of them. That work is meaningful beyond any "real work" I've ever done because I believe at this point in my life, that is more in line with God's original intentions for me. But for whatever reason, for this particular season of my life, it has become necessary for me to do this work, so in line with what Barb said, I'm trying to do it knowing it is what He has for me at this moment in time. I guess you might say I'm somewhat conflicted in that I have to do the "real work" because it's necessary right now, but I miss the meaningful work of caring for my family because that really is a full time job and I don't have full time with it, so I feel like I'm doing a poor job of the meaningful work and I'm really not able to give my best to the "real work" that is not very meaningful.
And that's probably way more than you wanted to hear and way more than two cents worth too, (or maybe way less). Hope it's useful in some way, and I hope I didn't ramble around in too many circles and not make sense. I've been told by a certain someone that I do that when I'm blogging - (how rude!).
barb and melissa pretty much summed it up. Work can stink, but life would be nothing without it - something to do more than occupy your time and give you a paycheck - it's something that you do to make a difference in the world and know that you are, one day at a time.
I'll agree and add to that ...
Once you are doing something that really makes a difference in the world, it holds the potential to transform from a "job" to a "passion." At that point, it doesn't really seem like work anymore. :-)
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