I have watched with interest how things have taken a sudden turn for many people, including my family, over the last year. What is dominant of course has been the effect of the global recession, which a most countries are experiencing at the same time. It seems no one is spared, and those who seem to be wading through have also seen their purchasing power spiral down dramatically. But most affected are those who have lost their jobs in a market that seems to grow uncertain by the day. About two years ago many never saw this coming. The preparation for the crash was nonchalant and very little attention was paid to the volatility of the financial system, considering the fact that this is a system heavily intertwined.

Today what we see is a terrible desperation on the part of many, and some already have their lives come to a screeching halt with no idea of what next to do. I will dare to say that the reason this is so is because of life’s unspoken philosophy: ‘My job is my life’. What’s even more painful for some is not the fact that the job paid the bills, but the mere fact that it defined self-worth and determined livelihood. So now that the job is gone, life is gone. So if your job is your life, when it is taken away, so is your life. This is happening to many today, and who can blame them? It is the way the system operates anyway, and many are inextricably wrapped into it and can only imagine their living within the confines of this worldly system.

In meditating over the course of the year, I am convinced that there is no reason for anyone’s job to control their life. I am even more convinced today that there is a big difference between your job and your work. Some people have a job, but have no work, while some have work, but no job. I remember back in the days when I was yet to go into a university, I was so busy doing stuff that I can only now imagine. I left home at 10:00 am and came back at night tired. What exactly I found to do I cannot really account for all, but I was positively engaged in making my life better and the lives of others. I had no job, but I had work to do. So everyone around me never knew I had no job, and looked at me as one busy man who was actively engaged with some paying job somewhere. They were right. I was actively engaged, and it was also paying me well, but not in the way others thought. I had a close friend who never knew I had no paying job for close to 5 years, and was stunned when I revealed that I wasn’t paid for the things I did. It all makes sense to me now. Then I was merely living. Now I have a chance to look back and see that most of what I know today and how much I have grown came from my full time engagement in work; even without a job.

Many today have lost their jobs, but worse is that they have no work. This is a bad place to be. Your job only gives you money, but your work gives you satisfaction. Some are lucky that their jobs have also become their work, but only in a few cases do you see this. When you have this understanding, you will know that though you may be fired from your job, you can never be fired from your work. Your work is what you do outside what you are instructed to in earning money. No one gives you this assignment, but it comes from a conviction of what you know about the course your life ought to take. This is where your true worth lies. So if your job ends today, your work will always continue and give you a reason to wake up in the morning. It will keep your excitement constant, and retain your peak performance.

Discouragement doesn’t come to a person who has work to do. It only comes to the jobless and the ‘workless’. So if you have no job, while searching, make sure you are working at something and not sitting idle. Stop whining about it and the number of  resumes you have sent out. Take a seat, relax, and take off the scales on your eyes, and the foreskins of your heart to understand the process you are going through. Most people are overly presumptuous, and think they understand what is going on in the world. This is why you have many switching professions and acquiring qualifications in fields they assume to be lucrative, and they aren’t even sure what aspect of society will be hard hit again. They wrongly assess the situation and fail to look inward and find grace to continue in life.

Like my mentor will say: “Life does not give you what you deserve, only what you demand”. So stop waiting for a dream job. Get busy with the work you have to do. If your dream job comes, good. If it doesn’t, makes no difference. Why? YOU HAVE WORK TO DO SO GET ABOUT IT.

So I ask you this: are you jobless and workless at the same time? Then the graphic on this note refers to you. But I tell you, being jobless doesn’t mean being workless. First go and do some work, then, perhaps, you might find a job 😉