Big fat salary, or a stable job? Neither!

A good salary implies accumulation; a stable job implies fear – “What if this job goes away? What will happen to me?”

 Work is life! Out of the 14 or 15 hours in the day, when you would not be sleeping, when you would not be doing your regular daily tasks, you would be spending the majority of your time working. So, if you are awake, 15-16 hours a day, out of that 12 or 14 hours are going to be spent in work-related activities. Do you see this? You are going to spend 70 to 80 per cent of your life working.

Work is life. And if you do not love your work, then actually you will hate life, because work is life. You cannot approach work using these considerations: salary, stability these are very small, very trivial considerations.

 Have you come across a word called “Calling”?

 “Calling” means the work that calls out to you. A work that beckons you, that says “come” It’s so loving, it’s so attractive, you want to do it. You want to do it even if you are not paid anything. You said high salary, I am saying, “Choose the work that you would do even without getting any salary.

 Imagine what kind of work that would be which you are ready to do even without being paid? Now, if that work can be your life, then life is beautiful. And only such work deserves to be your life. Only such work deserves to be taken up. You must find out your calling. You must find out what really beckons you.

What do you mean by stability?

When you say, “I want stable work”, what do you mean by that?

 Usually what people mean by that is—there should be a sense of security, that the job job must not go away, that one must feel protected, that one’s source of livelihood, their monthly salary is secure and no one can take it away.

 But when you really love what you do, you do not seek security. Security is about future. Security says, “What will happen tomorrow?”. When you are really engaged in your work, really drowned in it, then you have no space left to worry about the future.

 You say, “This day is so fulfilling, there is so much in it, let me first experience this fully. Everything is overflowing, let me get into this fully. Who has the time to think about the future? Who wants to be secure? Even the thought of security, even the thought of future does not enter my mind. So, who wants stability?”

 Wrong career choice

 What do you do when you board a wrong train?

 You have boarded a wrong train and the train has moved, what do you do? Do you say that, “since I have boarded this train, so, let me go all the way till where the train goes” and the train might be of two thousand kilometers journey, do you say that? Or do you say, “When the next station comes, I will get down”, what do you say?

 It is possible that you boarded the wrong train. Now just because you have boarded the wrong train, don’t say that I have already covered a hundred kilometers, let me cover two thousand kilometers more. I have given four years to this, so let me give my entire life to this. What kind of argument is this? It is a stupid argument, right? I have given four years to this, so let me give forty more years to this — it is a stupid thing to say.

 And no work is small. Reputation means nothing, opinions of others mean nothing. Your life is your life — one, single, precious life — that is there to live. Discover your calling, not just a job, a calling. A calling is something very-very different from a job. Discover your calling!

Inputs from Acharya Prashant , a Vedanta teacher and founder of PrashantAdvait Foundation.

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