Good afternoon. Please forgive my informal attire. I’m outside today, working on the farm.
And I haven’t done a lot of physical work, other than go, of course, to a gym regularly, in a long time. I was here about a year ago. It’s like everyone, life is busy.
So here I am, putting in my due diligence on the farm, and this got me to thinking about the concept of work. Now, in the modern world, in my estimation, we’re being told that work is something bizarre, strange. Try to avoid it.
So first of all, what is work? Well, I think work is an effort that we put into something or someone to develop, for self-development or development of a project, let’s say.
Now, I know I get a lot of advertisements about taking classes on AI, and AI is going to reduce your work, quote unquote, to nothing. A project that should have taken three days is now going to take three hours or 30 minutes.
And I wonder to myself, is this a good thing? Because of course, AI is a wonderful tool, has all the knowledge in the world, good and bad, of course, and it will help me. But I think work itself begins at the base level, doesn’t it?
The first thing I must work on, of course, is me, the self-development of me. Who am I in the world, so to speak? What is my mission?
We talk a lot about this, don’t we? What is my mission in life, right? So I have to spend some time developing the persona that I am, basically, right?
Because I want the best for me. And if I don’t want the best for me, there’s something wrong. Because my piece of life, my piece of life is unique, as we often talk about.
So firstly, I must work on me, right? And then I think by working on me, I must promise myself that I’m going to gain control of my natural procrastination or laziness. I’m a naturally, I think, lazy person.
And I think that’s true for virtually everyone I know. The difference, the difference between a person like me and perhaps a truly lazy person, the victim, if you will, is that I’ve developed a routine that I stick to.
And I don’t like to stick to my routine. I don’t like to get up on time in the morning, make my bed, write in my notebook, do my exercises. Many days, I don’t want to do this, but I do, I do.
Because it is necessary to develop a routine if I’m going to develop me. So I must work on me first. That’s the very first thing.
And then once I come to my notebook, then I can work on the development of me, right? Kind of an startlingly beautiful concept, right? I can work on developing the person that I want to be, and I could be wrong initially.
That’s the wonderful thing about life. I might be totally incorrect with the person I think I want to be, because I’m listening to others, of course, up until the time I’m probably 25, at least.
I’m influenced by my parents, my schoolmates, my girlfriend, boyfriend, whomever, right? It takes a long time to listen to that inner voice, doesn’t it? Right?
Really. And then I think I’m a great believer in physical work.
Get your hands dirty, right? Somehow. Get out, have a project, a physical project in a garden, piece of dirt.
Touch that piece of dirt, right? In the Christian story, in the Jewish story, in the Old Testament, we come from basically the earth, and we return to the earth, right?
So ultimately, we have to have some linkage, I believe, with our grandmother’s farm, our friend’s little bit of dirt. I’ve been coming to my friend’s farm for some 50 years.
We have a large piece of land outside of Krakow, beautiful, and whenever I come, I try to do my little bit of physical work, right? To try to develop the concept of what it was like to have been a peasant in this region.
So my great-grandfather was from part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and they were serfs, I’m sure. They were slaves up until 1848.
After this whole crisis in 1848, Europe exploded, people demanded freedom, and one of the trade-offs for the Russian Empire helping the Austro-Hungarian Empire was that the serfs in Austro-Hungary were going to be allowed to be freed.
But curiously, the serfs in the Russian Empire were not freed until 1861, so some 15 years later or so, not quite, right? But a long time later, basically. Interesting, I always think, that those slaves were freed later.
But then, once they were freed, many of the serfs enslaved themselves. Isn’t it weird? When you’re now free, which all of us are, we’re now free to do anything, be anyone we want to be.
But most of us don’t take that option. No. I’m going to allow myself to be enslaved, perhaps to the society.
I’m going to go to school. I’m going to get a degree or degrees. I’m going to get a good job, good job, whatever that is, God Almighty.
And then I’m going to meet Mr. Mrs. Wright.
I’m going to perhaps get married, procreate. Maybe many people not now. They procreate a dog.
Bizarre as it seems. People are running around with these little carts and their dogs. And then I’m going to save enough money that I can retire and ultimately live out my golden years, which unfortunately are short and die.
There’s an organization called FIRE, Financial Independence Retire Early. And I was reading an article about some people yesterday that retired at 40. Now, everyone knows, I think, in the modern era, two things.
Never retire, never retire. Change your job. I’ve changed my job, obviously, but always have a job, always.
Secondly, keep your teeth. They don’t have to be beautiful, for sure, but keep your dental health. So, fire is totally the opposite of that.
So now they have something along this line that is a diminished fire. It’s not a full-on retirement. It’s a second job.
So they still can call it, say, I’m retired. Be arrogant. Little bit of swagger there.
I’m retired. You probably met people like this. What do you do?
I’m retired. Like it’s as if you’ve been given the golden cherry, at least in Western culture. Very foolish.
Very foolish. Right? And then ultimately, you still have this part-time job and you go on.
But you know, why do we need to work until we’re dead? Why? Well, basically, because we are busy beings.
We’re natural workers like bees or ants. We naturally have to work. And when we stop this busy-ness, when we stop this work, somehow we stop gaining information.
So you think to yourself, what’s your modus operandi? What’s your operational focus every single day? And that should be not to just waste 24 hours, right?
My God, it should be to gain knowledge, to build on your mission, whatever it is. I don’t know what my mission is. Well, come on then, work.
Here’s that key word, work and find out. Because it is there for all of us, right? So you’re going to work on yourself firstly.
You’re going to then develop that goal, that mission, and then ultimately, you’re going to do some physical work.
And then finally, finally, you’re going to work on your place in the cosmos, your relationship with God, Gaia, or the universe. And you can’t just dismiss it. When I’m dead, I’m dead.
There are far too many intelligent people that believe differently. So at the very least, at the least, you owe it to yourself to investigate some form of religion. I have friends that are Daoists, I have friends that are Jewish, Christian, etc.
But find your own peace with God. You’re in this beautiful park, in this natural environment, everything alive, everything growing. I cannot attribute this only to nature, right?
I can’t. There’s something bigger than this. There’s something.
You know it and I know it intrinsically, inside of ourselves. It is innate. And therefore, I believe that it is real.
And if it’s not real, like Pascal tells us, what are you going to lose? Nothing. Nothing at all.
So you think of work in the future, and you know what they say. You know what they say. Critical thinking is everything, especially if you’re going to discover what work means to you.
And critical thinking is great. Truly great. You take care.
God bless. Bye-bye.