The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

While browsing through the biography section of Fully Booked one time, I came across the Philosophy section nearby.  Philosophy books aren’t in my radar because I don’t think my brain cells could grasp the depth of the subject.  Haha…. But out of curiosity, I did a quick scan and my eye caught a book entitled “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work” by Alain de Botton.  Pleasure and unhappiness at  work I could understand but sorrow?  Such a strong, painful adjective to describe work.  So I pulled out the book and read the back page.

We spend most of our working lives at work – in occupations most often chosen by our inexperienced younger selves.  And yet we rarely ask ourselves how we got there or what our job mean to us…  

Here we see what other people wake up to do each day – and night – to make our frenzied world function… Botton leads us on a journey around an eclectic range of occupations, from rocket scientist to biscuit manufacturer - in search of what makes jobs either soul-destroying or fulfilling.  

I’ve always been curious of  people in various occupations so I ended up buying the book. :)

Botton takes a look at several occupations, interviewing subjects, joining fieldworks, sitting in meetings, observing via closed circuit television.  Among those which piqued my interest are the following:

Career counseling.  This isn’t a big thing in the Philippines but in other countries, it is.  People take time to get to know what career to pursue even in middle age.  The counselor featured in the book knew that it was hopeless to try to guide people towards more fulfilling vocations  by just discussing.  He says that concerns about money and status would long ago have extinguished most clients’ ability to think authentically about their options.  Thus, what he does is to ask clients to list down things that they like – anything that pops into their head in 10 minutes - and a list of people they envied. 

The counselor’s technique is to free oneself from concerns and think of what delights and excites you, without thinking in terms of career frames.  He said that you’re to act like a treasure hunter with a detector, listening for what he called beeps of joy.  For example, long before one decides to get into politics, a telling signal would have been finding joy in successfully fixing a rift between family members.  Or one’s interest in a restaurant may not be because of the place or the business itself but because of one’s admiration of someone who was able to successfully build a business around a personal interest.   Gives us a new perspective on how to look into ourselves. 

Rocket Science. Let me just tell you that everytime I’m on a plane, it never ceases to amaze me how such a big thing can fly, and fly more than 12 hours non-stop!  So when I read about rocket science, it just blew me away.  Take this for instance - did you know that before you can be allowed into a satellite’s presence, you have to undertake a purification ritual because the machine is extremely hypersensitive?  At the speed that it would travel – 3.07km per second – a stray of human hair inside one of its transponders could create a disastrous force field of electromagnetic energy or a single oily fingerprint could fissure its solar panels.  This occupation clearly calls out for accuracy, precision…perfection even.

And how about this - did you know that a launcher doesn’t deliver the satellite to its final destination but it’s just to lift it 250 kms into the atmosphere known as the point of injection.  From there, the satellite would travel several days, by means of its own motors, to its orbiting location.  In the case of the satellite featured in the book, the satellite took about 10 days to reach its final destination which was 36,000 kms above Japan.  It’s just incomprehensible how man was able to invent the satellite, let alone conceptualize it.  This is really way, way beyond my simple mind. Haha…

Painting.  Botton’s painter subject is Stephen Taylor who specializes in painting trees.  He can spend 5 months on a canvas measuring just 20 square centimeters!  Whoa…His technique is a product of 20 years of research – he spent about 3 years just to learn the best way to render the movement of wheat in a gust of wind, and even longer to learn how to use colors. 

He spent hundreds of hours in front of a painting (Man with a Quilted Sleeve by Titian) which taught him  a lot of things – how to use a few shades but still make leaves look dense (inspired by the use of only 5 shades of blue in the sleeve and yet it looks weighty and airy), how to imply things rather than explain them, how to paint a tree as a dynamic mass of the whole instead of telling the story of each individual leaf.  After reading Taylor’s story, I felt ashamed to even consider myself as a painter! Haha…

Out of curiosity, I also quickly googled the works of Taylor and wow, he has such beautiful paintings!  I almost thought the trees where photos until I saw the work-in progress photos of the paintings. Such a gifted painter. :)

Anyway, the book changed a lot on how I view things.  I appreciate everything even more now knowing that each object that we use, the electricity that fires up our appliances, the food that we eat, somewhere out there (which can be across the globe), someone worked hard to make it available for us. :)