YOU WERE BORN FOR A REASON
Part One
Chapter 5: Work, Work, Work
UNSEEN PRESSURES
It is often said that a fulfilling job is the purpose of life. Yet how many of us actually find our work fulfilling? Even successful people who are able to showcase their talents run up against hard realities that prevent them from doing as they wish. Some celebrities, for instance, feel so acutely the pain of the loss of their privacy that it can begin to sour even the extraordinary career that brought them fame in the first place.
Basketball great Michael Jordan is one of the most appealing and charismatic figures in the sports world. But his enormous celebrity has come with a price; he is a virtual prisoner of his fame. Going out in public causes such a stir among his fans that, when possible, he says he prefers to stay home or in a hotel room.
His perfect day, he says, would be to get up and take his wife and children to a pancake house for breakfast and then go to an amusement park, something he says he hasn't done since he was twelve or thirteen years old.
“I can't go,” he says in his book Rare Air, published in 1993, at about the height of his fame. “I can, but I don't want to go through the [whole] spectacle. It's not fair to the children . Sometimes I wonder what it would be like not to be Michael Jordan. Or to be Michael Jordan, but to be just like everyone else who has a family and is able to do family things.”
Quoted from Jordan, Rare Air.)
An extraordinary man, he seeks an ordinary life.
Meanwhile, fiction writer Haruki Murakami—whose work has been translated into about forty languages—is adamant that he has not gained any release or relief through writing books:
Guy de Maupassant, the French master of the short story, said: “Do not envy the writer, but rather pity him.”I do not write and publish sketches like this to make myself feel better . At least so far, I see no sign that writing has been at all liberating to my spirit . People write because they can't help themselves. The act of writing is of no use in itself, and provides no attendant salvation.
(Kaiten mokuba no deddo hiito)
However much you may love and excel at something, when you make it your job, it can quickly turn into a burden. Even people whose work attracts admiration and envy must carry an unseen load of sorrow and distress.
