Doing your job and just that!

A sense of wonder combines with an expansive spaciousness when some new perspective is introduced to the mind, usually through books. The mind just shifts paradigms or enlarges its views. It is an exhilarating feeling. And it feels empowering, even if the paradigm is one of pathos or of bitter truth. So I have grown fond of reading books. New ways to look at life, new dimensions to explore the world. I would want to see things in entirety through these understandings. I would perhaps want to come to an idea of a big picture and then chalk out my place in it. Which is, as a famous biologist put it, infinitesimally small in the unfeeling immensity of the universe.

But say I manage to gather an idea about all of this stuff, how would that affect me? Perhaps it would help me go about my day to day activities in a different way. What if I apply myself to my day to day activities very well, instead of aspiring to become this or gather that? If I am happy to be a prisoner, content in jail, then the very term loses relevance. I am not in a prison anymore, I might as well be in a Vipassana centre or Shangri la itself. Just as brilliance excites the imagination, humility moves the soul. There is a tension between these two aspects in many facets of our life.

And being present in our workplace, mentally also, posts us in different situations each day. The way we react to them and engage with the people involved throws new insights on how to proceed. It helps us improvise and intervene in issues in a better way.

Perhaps then, doing your job and doing just that, may lead to a deeper appreciation of what is going on all around. And perhaps, studying other issues and books, would help us do our daily job in a better way. Reinventing ourselves as each new book is finished. Polishing our understanding of theoretical things as each experience is lived through. It may be complementary. Enabling us to do our jobs well and do just that.