Yourself?

Work

I thought about the mosquitoes that are appearing in my room now due to the construction works that are just happening around my block. I thought about the perspective that the mosquito might have about me. This huge blob of food, dangerous food, that sits around typing into his laptop all the time and reading books. How useless. And when he actually gets up and does something, it is either to eat, or to hit a ball around a court and chase it at high speed.

Whereas a mosquito thinks, I am doing a dangerous activity in order to propagate my bloodline. My tasks are infinitely more laborous, and my dangers much more acute than his. Hence, it is justifiable for me to take blood from him, because my activity is infinitely more noble.

That led me to the thought. What is it that my existence contributes to? I am studying. Reading about something from books in the hope that my understanding of what is written there contributes to my practice of medicine in the future. In my mind, I am doing honest work. But what is work? I am not flying around the world, looking for prey. I am not propagating my bloodline. I am not doing anything actively except consuming resources.

Why then do I say that I work. Do I think I work because I am doing something faintly laborious and disagreeable? Do I think I work because what I do tires me? Do I think I work because I think I am contributing something.

What is work? And why do we consider some things work. How do we shift our frame of mind from work to play? In the case of a mosquito. Is sucking blood work? Is having sex and prolonging the bloodline work? What if men couldn't orgasm. Would sex be work?

I wanted to post about how we're so lucky that we don't have to work in the traditional sense of moving heavy objects, and restoring structures that nature takes down. But then I thought about all those other occupations. Do they really work? Does a farmer feel that he works hard by furrowing the soil and sowing the seeds when it is actually the plants that convert sunlight into sugar? Does a construction worker feel that he works by moving piles of earth, or assembling concrete, that someone else designed, with raw materials that someone else quarried, and with stones some natural process created, for him to work with pleasurably.

For if you think about it, our world is a really pleasant place to live in. Our world is like heaven. All possible things that may go wrong have been thought about. Building things, moving heavy objects, we all have a pleasant way of achieving these tasks. And our bodies take these punishments, and recover with just a little bit of rest each night, so that we're ready to work the next morning.

If you think about it, even if we give our all each day, we get all that energy back with just 8 hours of not doing anything. If we are in homeostasis, the energy consumed in our 8-12 hours of work is equal to our 6-8 hours of sleep. When we sleep, we recover energy faster than if we'd been working hard consciously.

Somehow, working hard doesn't seem hard enough anymore.

posted by Downhere. @ 11:09 am