This article, penned by Mr. Kahlil Corazo from the Development Office, was first published in the July 2009 issue of Universitas.
I think I discovered something really important.
A large part of life is work, and giving meaning to that work depends a lot on making the right career choices. I have already made several major career choices and have helped several friends and family in theirs, and I discovered that great career decisions boil down to just three questions:
- What’s the car and what’s the road?
- Show me the money (Or, what is true, good, and beautiful?)
- What’s your royal flush?
Let me explain each.
What’s the car and what’s the road?
Whether you think life is about the journey or about the destination, it is always useful to know two things: what’s my vehicle and what’s the terrain?
First, take a look at your car—the talents you have that will carry you through your journey. After two decades or so, you must have noticed that you are better than others at some things; perhaps you draw better, run faster, speak more eloquently, or think more clearly than your classmates and friends. You must have also noticed that the world has given you your own set of opportunities and obstacles—your terrain.
Knowing your talents and opportunities are very helpful in making career decision, but they are not as important as the next two questions. Two decades or so of existence isn’t enough to give you a perfect understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and obstacles. You will inevitably experience a major failure, but this should not discourage you from pursuing a career option. At your age, you have the right to think that you can be good at anything you put your heart into. Yes, that sounds extremely cheesy, but it is reasonable. It takes less than a year to be an expert in something easy, and five years to be an expert in something fairly difficult. With your age, you can end up being an expert in dozens of things by the time you reach the end of the road.
Show me the money (Or, what is true, good, and beautiful?)
Many people consider it bad taste to be too blunt about money. But I have to tell you this: the easiest way to measure the value of work is to look at its price tag. The more people are willing to pay for it, the more they value it. Ask yourself, “Among my professional options, where can I earn the most?”
I’m not saying that money is the most important goal in life. It’s just like breathing. You don’t live to breathe; you need to breathe to live. Likewise, you don’t live to make money; you make money to have the material conditions to reach your life-goals.
However, it is a mistake to limit profit to pesos, dollars, and euros. Think, rather, in terms of the true, the good, and the beautiful. Effective as it is, capitalism is blind to many valuable kinds of work. For instance, philosophers generally earn less than bankers. But that does not mean the study of the eternal truths is a less worthwhile profession. Likewise, Mother Teresa’s lifetime earnings is a pittance compared to a CEO’s monthly salary. Yet, the good that she did is clearly worth more than a CEO’s lifetime earnings. And if artists do indeed starve, it is not because their art is worthless. Just think of your favorite books, food or songs—the beautiful. If their creators spent their lives making lots of money instead of literature, cuisine, or music, what a poor world it would be.
There is an even more important consideration than profit. Sooner or later, life will deal you a hand that makes all other considerations secondary.
What’s your royal flush?
I had a colleague who had her first child a few years ago. When she came back from her long maternity leave, she said that she was a changed woman. “Life is no longer just about me,” she said. Before becoming a mother, perhaps a salary increase meant a faster car or more dinners in swankier restaurants. After childbirth, a salary increase probably means healthier food [for] her son, and a promotion, a better education for him. I don’t remember what her pre-motherhood desktop background was (perhaps it was a boyband). But her post-pregnancy desktop revealed what work now meant to her, of what she wanted to be reminded of as she battled through the daily challenges of the corporate world. Her desktop was filled with innumerable photos of a sleeping baby.
This was her royal flush. If you are lucky enough to have the unbeatable card combination, it does not matter what other cards are on the table. If you have something that means more to you than anything in the world, it does not matter what your gut reaction to your job is. It does not matter if you need to work twice as hard as your colleagues. It does not even matter if you need to shift careers and learn something totally new.
Everything takes on a new perspective. Failure does not crush your ego, or victory get into your head, because it is no longer about you.
Most of the time, opportunities and profit are perfectly sufficient criteria for making your decisions. And if you have several equally profitable and equally possible options, you can even pick the one you like most. But when your royal flush appears—parenthood is just one example—everything else is just background noise.
In any case, work in itself is meaningful
Even without having something as life changing as motherhood or fatherhood, work in itself is meaningful.
There is a bum within us all just waiting to lull us into a comfortable but meaningless life. Work is the most effective way out of that downward spiral to bumhood. The more you work, the more you grow your capacity for work, and the more you curb your couch potato tendencies. It’s almost like muscles: the more you repeat a physical movement, the stronger your muscles become; and the stronger your muscles are, the easier that physical movement is.
Work truly makes us better people. All our good traits came about from some repeated use of our character “muscles.” Whatever ability we have to get things done and be good to people got developed from those innumerable trials and errors since our childhood. I’m sure that Rizal was able to face his death with honor because his character was steeled by years of work amidst suffering and deprivation. Work not only prevents us from becoming bums; it prepares us for becoming heroes.
These days, it’s a bit challenging to find a firing squad to martyr you. But each one of us will someday be given an important responsibility. The best way to prepare for that is to strengthen our character muscles—our virtues—through our day-to-day work.
It gets even better
Aside from making us better people, work also makes the world a better place. All the good things civilization has to offer came about through work. For instance, this magazine you are holding right now is the result of the work of many individuals, each stacking a contribution on top of another. The writers, the editor, the layout artist, the janitor—yes, even the accountant—all contributed to the creation of this magazine. It’s the same for you and me. As long as we don’t do evil, whatever work we’ll choose to do will also contribute to whatever is true, good, and beautiful in the world.
There is an even more awesome, more cosmic, meaning of work. The best one to tell you about that happens to be the saint who inspired the founding of UA&P, St. Josemaría Escrivá. Just go to www.escrivaworks.org, check out Chapter 4 of the book Friends of God, and you’ll find out what I mean.
Finding meaning in your work, I think, is the ultimate gauge on whether you made the right career choice. Career decisions, like all life decisions, are never like laboratory experiments, where a certain mixture of chemicals always produces the expected substance. But with a bit of reflection and some fortitude, you can always make career choices for the right reasons. And that, I think, is the key to finding happiness in work.#
Banner photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels.
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