The boredom of work

One of the most depressing parts of our lives is that we have to do the same things again and again. It’s boring and we hate it.

Naturally as children we would do so much. One time we would become a pilot and the other time we would become a scientist. There seemed to be no limits to what we could become. We used to play different roles and we enjoyed it.

But we feel sad when we think that each of the roles that we played could  have been a career. Sadly that cannot happen in our modern world. We have to pick a particular role and play it for the rest of our entire life. 

The American Poet Walt Whitman once quoted: “ I am large, I contain multitudes”.

 

The Poet here refers that in each of us we possess a multitude of talents. We can be a good teacher, a good sportsman or something as simple as a good fisherman. It is in our nature that we want to become what we like doing. It’s not our fault that we cannot specialise in everything. 

Adam Smith quotes in his famous book “The Wealth of Nations” that productivity is increased by the division of labour. He also says that division of labour is necessary for increasing the wealth of a nation. 

Karl Marx, the famous political theorist had quite contrary views to the division of labour. Karl proposed that division of labour and concentrating on a particular skill would dull our lives. But it doesn’t have to be this way for him in his Communist world. In the Communist society, anybody could become anything. A person could be a fisherman in the morning, a writer in the noon and work at a public office in a company in the evenings without actually becoming one. 

But it was an unrealistic view of life. We have to accept that some part of our lives would die without being truly fulfilled and expressed. When we specialise in one thing we become more efficient and productive. We lose on our multitudes and increase the wealth of our nations. Thus, we should accept that we cannot become everyone and be happy with who we are.