Why a career is good for you.

So far i have yet to discover why.

So you get report to work at 9 each day (830 for me), work till 6, get back around 8 and then sort yourself out and go to bed. Tomorrow will be the same.

So you earn money. Maybe loads of it.

So you work hard.

So you get promoted. But that's the next 40 years of your life, day in, day out, earning more and more money, moving to a better office, getting a better sounding title on that namecard...

So? What's the point? You get home too tired at 7,8, for a precious few hours of your own time, and then sleep and wake up the next day and the whole thing repeats itself.

And this is for the better half of your life. 

And i don't live for the weekends. I live for every day, every moment, and life certainly does not start when you're retired or 40 or when you have "made it" or something. I find such statements preposterous - in their flippant waste of life.

And the money? What can it buy you? Prestige, social standing, the latest and the best consumer goods perhaps. But i'm sorry, all of those don't really interest me.

A career - and that's most of your whole adult life, pursuing a career, navigating the office, and its very material, very unmistakable rewards - but even so you can't enjoy them until you're retired, can you?

But what about inner growth, spiritual development? Living, and growing as a human being?

For those who enjoy their careers, you really are a better human being than i am (and thus probably wouldn't mind the offence).

Me, I work. Still, I need the money - some money. But i see myself as a merry prankster, ever the rogue, trying to cheat the system (and not minding if i get screwed - i'm just going to laugh long and hard at Life one day when i'm a penniless old man roaming the streets with his memories) - by squeezing some money out of it through work (which i value), but not career that has become almost a calling, It's all about balance overall, isn't it?

Money as a means to other things. Realistically, not being a Zen ascetic or possessing enough courage yet to just entrust Life to Life, some money is needed to live, to travel, to enjoy the occassional good book and a good drink, as this urban Life delivers. I may be a beggar in Life, a vagabond, but when someone throws you a feast, you're not gonna say no, are you?

Enjoyment as it comes, but not attachment. One of my favourite Zen quotes -  "What is your Buddhism? Piling fresh fruits into a bottomless basket" - that "the way of Zen is to embrace the abundant experiences Life offers and to enjoy them in the moment while they are still fresh. Then to hold on to nothing, but to let the present become the past, confident that the basket will continue to be filled with new extraordinary fruit as Life constantly unfolds its mysteries".

Urban Zen. For me it is the intention, the mind. You can still live beautifully in a shit environment where almost everyone wants that bag and that house on the hill and never has enough of anything. Living beautifully, a beautiful mind, accepting, and trying... That's grace, that's human.

Life, after all, is a dance. You push and you pull, you give and you take. Ditto with life.

I look into my own little personal crystal ball and see myself paying off my bank loan, and then going off to teach in India for the next few years, throw in a stint as a barista back home perhaps (far more satisfaction making something with your own hands - Quality relationships - than pushing paper), quit, go off on a working holiday somewhere, come back when it is time to come back, fry burgers in McDonald's, learn more about life, do some social work...

I will be a penniless old man one day. But i guess that's a fair price to pay. My philosophy in Life has always been - because you can't have everything in Life, you make your choices, as consciously as possible, and be happy with them and accept the outcomes, the good and the inevitable bad. Being conscious and content, and hopefully, Happy.