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Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
April 06, 2013
What do you say to someone who confesses he has run out of enthusiasm for his job?
Just can't get excited about it, he says, it is dreary getting up each morning and going to work, the week stretches like glue and Friday evenings have him in deep depression.
It is driving him crazy, things are so bad he has to quit or go nuts.
Do you tell him he should resign and be happy? Hang in there, things have to get better since they can't get worse.
Perhaps advise him that if his get up and go has got up and gone he might as well follow it.
Try something new. Go for broke.
All this is fine for free advice but there is no guarantee that it gets better anywhere else. The grass out there needn't necessarily be green; it could be brown and choked with weeds. And then, if one has to be really blunt, where is it written that enthusiasm has anything to do with doing a job. It isn't part of the contract, no one says, you have to display enthusiasm or zeal or even enjoyment, these are extra baggage, stuff we tote along to work because we think that's the way to be.
Read the contract. It says you do your job and you do it well and you get money for it every month. Period. You do your job...read my lips, no more, no less.
Mutually exclusive conditions.
Imagine if all of us believed that enthusiasm was a prerequisite for keeping a job and kept measuring how much of it we had.
You are not falling in love, my friend, you are delivering a bill of goods eight hours a day and if you do not let yourself be deflected by these irrelevancies you'll automatically be a lot happier. Include them in your equations and its dollars to doughnuts you will be miserable.
Like this person who is getting all mixed up in his priorities. Seen too many movies, read too many books about job satisfaction.
That commodity is a myth. Fairy tale stuff, a figment of the imagination, some immature, undergrad concept of life on the sunny side of the street.
How many of us whistle Dixie when we leave for work? Do you bound out of bed all bushy tailed and bright eyed and full of zest? Is your job some 3D movie with surround sound?
Oh please, spare me. You go to work because you have to pay the bills. You keep going to work because you are responsible for the family. You stick at the job because every 30 days the job allows you to say hello to your two ends...even if they do not meet.
(The writer is a Senior Editorial Advisor of Khaleej Times and the paper’s former Editor. He has also been the Editor of Gulf News, Gulf Today, Emirates Today and Bahrain Tribune)
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