Contentment

Contentment

The festival season and particularly Navratri is a time when I get to meet some of my friends who are usually busy with their jobs or families. These invitations for "haldi kumkum" during Navratri help women give their busy schedule a break and catch up with friends and other relatives. Even a self imposed recluse like me decides to dust off the cobwebs and honour these invitations.

During one of these visits, I met two of my old friends. One has a globe trotting, highly paying job in a big multinational but when she spoke about her job, she sounded very disillusioned and unhappy. She was complaining about the kind of power politics she had to endure day in and day out, the games people were playing and how finally none of it made any sense to her.Her words were "I am working my a&* off here, all to no avail."It seemed like she was staying in the job because that was the best job that her CV could fetch her in today's time and the company is a heavyweight name in the industry and since she was career minded, she had no option but to put up with the stress and carry on. The other lady was bubbly and happy with contentment emanating from every pore.She accepts assignments to teach English to corporates and those aspiring to take exams for admissions to foreign universities. She was telling us about the great feedback her sessions were receiving, how she was getting repeat assignments and how good she felt doing what she was doing. To hear her talk about her job and herelf, one might think that she held a very important position and had a great career. Moneywise too her earnings are nothing great by today's standards. She felt she was doing something important and useful and she was doing her job very well. If for any reason she stopped doing this she would find something else to do and do it with as much involvement and happiness.And as I said,that contentment and happiness were almost infectious. I kept wondering why my other friend could not see all the advantages of her job that were quite obvious but chose to feel wasted and discontented.

Perhaps it is because finally satisfaction has to come from within and nothing external can give it to you. Friend no.1 was constantly comparing her self with the other colleagues at work and how someone who was not as good as her was treated as her equal and worse how her boss was an idiot but was where he was because he had better PR skills (to use her words, her boss was there "by sucking up to the bosses and by taking credit for all that others do.") She could not be happy about the compensations she was receiving but was unhappy about what others were getting. I understand her completely as I have been in a similar plight and suffered similar stresses. Friend No.2 was clear about what she wanted from her job and life was happy getting it. As for feeling productive and useful this is again a matter of perspective and seeing the larger picture.

I was reminded of this story:
"One day, a gentleman on a walk passed a construction site and inquired of the workers, 'What are you doing?' 'I'm breaking rock out of the quarry,' said one. Another replied, 'I'm in charge of making the mortar that will cement the stones.' A third man, caked in mud, was pushing a wheelbarrow, and he stopped just long enough to say, with a sense of proud delight, 'I'm building a cathedral."

I guess the second friend thinks of any job she does as "building a cathedral." Great recipe for contentment, isn't it?