{"id":96776,"date":"2018-06-19T03:30:31","date_gmt":"2018-06-19T10:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/?page_id=96776"},"modified":"2018-06-19T03:30:31","modified_gmt":"2018-06-19T10:30:31","slug":"why-work","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/why-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Work?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear friend,<\/p>\n

The criticism that most Americans get is that we \u00e2\u20ac\u0153work too much\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. But what does that even mean? Is it desirable to work more, or less? Why work at all?<\/p>\n

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Download PDF: Why Work?<\/a><\/p>\n

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To start off, how do we even define \u00e2\u20ac\u0153work\u00e2\u20ac\u009d?<\/p>\n

I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think the word, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153work\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is a good word. Why? When most people talk about work, it is unpleasant. I think we think of work as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153toilsome labor\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (undesirable stuff we gotta do, in order to make money, to feed ourselves and pay rent).<\/p>\n

But I kind of like the biological\/scientific concept of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153energy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, which means the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153capacity to do work\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (work as defined through kinetic and potential energy).<\/p>\n

Also, when doing research on wiktionary, the Ancient Greek word for work is \u00e1\u00bc\u201d\u00cf\u0081\u00ce\u00b3\u00ce\u00bf\u00ce\u00bd (\u00c3\u00a9rgon)<\/a> which has similar ties to the word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153energy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n

Or you can see \u00e2\u20ac\u0153work\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as doing action.<\/p>\n

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For myself, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m the happiest when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m working on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153creative work\u00e2\u20ac\u009d: when I am expending my energy to ACTIVELY MAKE stuff, whether it be making ideas, making words, making pictures, making videos, etc. To me, this is more fun than passively taking in entertainment. Of course, we must still consume\u00e2\u20ac\u201d consume ideas from others, consume art from others, and consume food to survive.<\/p>\n

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In Vietnamese, the word work is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lam an\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, which literally means to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153do food\u00e2\u20ac\u009d; do something in order to procure food.<\/p>\n

So traditionally in Vietnamese, you had to labor in order to procure food for yourself, because if you didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t labor\/work, you would obviously starve to death.<\/p>\n

But in today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s society, where we are actually dying from over-eating and over-nutrition; what is the functional purpose of work, beyond perhaps paying rent?<\/p>\n

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Many of us get our sense of purpose in life through the employment or work we do. Some of us are lucky to have a job we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re passionate about, that we actually enjoy \u00e2\u20ac\u0153going to work\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n

But then again, I see a lot of people who work more and more and more because they desire to get more money, power, influence, etc. But is this desirable?<\/p>\n

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Well, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing wrong with having more power, money, and influence in life. But I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important for us to consider,<\/p>\n

\n Why do I work?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Make it a personal question.<\/p>\n

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I think most of us work for money, and money is a tool for us in modern society to procure what we need and desire. We trade our time, labor, energy, attention, and power in order to get money. We then trade our money for accommodation, food, drink, coffee, electronic devices, clothes, cars, etc.<\/p>\n

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But I think this is where we go wrong: we use money as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153point system\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to quantify our self-worth and progress in life. We treat money like gold in a video game; we think that by gaining more gold, gaining more weapons, more equipment, we are somehow better equipped to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153level up\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, and become level 99 (once we maxed out all our attributes and have all the rare items) and then we will be happy and satisfied forever.<\/p>\n

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But, if we do hypothetically reach level 99, will we truly be happy and satisfied for the rest of our life?<\/p>\n

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