I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live

One of my dearest friends, Robbo, once sent me a quote by George Bernard Shaw after he had been blown away by?Jeff Goldblum flawlessly reciting it word-for-word . It reads:

"This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."

I could write an entire book on this passage. Maybe one day I will!

I think it is timeless. I believe that it is utterly inspiring. It is a call to stand up, find your purpose, work hard, and serve others. It is a reminder not to be a victim and to rejoice that every day is an opportunity to leave the world in a better place than we found it.

At the time of writing (September 2022), the country where I live, the UK, is socially, politically, and economically in a bit of a mess. I wouldn't begrudge anyone for believing that it feels rather hopeless. But I don't believe we should feel hopeless.

I believe these can be signs not of decay but of regeneration. I believe these times of chaos can be the storm before the calm if we choose to respond in the right way.

We have a choice to make. We always do. We can choose to blame, lament, point, or even wag the finger. We can type, yell and scream with shrill voices.

Or we can step up. We can find our mighty purpose. We can focus not on what's wrong but on what?we can do?right. We can come together to weave a genuine togetherness back into the tapestry of our frayed society.

This won't be easy. It rarely is. But we can embrace and enjoy that the hard work it will take is virtuous, purposeful, fulfilling work.

This brings me to a concern I have.

An observation about well-being in the workplace

In the Western World, especially on platforms like LinkedIn and Medium, a lot is written about wellbeing. In part, this is a good and necessary thing. However, I think we are in danger of making our world worse, not better, in the way we speak about wellbeing.

As I discuss in my lectures on Spiral Dynamics, the capitalistic market system has been highly successful at lifting society out of poverty and building a better world. But it has also been exploitative and destructive. This includes our well-being.

Well-being, of course, exists on a spectrum. At the harshest end of the spectrum are people that work in mines, factories, and other hard-labour endeavours in the lesser financially developed world and are the most ill-treated.

At the lighter (but still significant) end of the spectrum, many people are left feeling unwell by work pressures. This is almost ubiquitous across the Western World.

In sum, we can make improvements in almost every market.

My contention is that we need to be careful not to conflate well-being with working less hard or fewer hours. Instead, I think we need to focus our time and contribution in different directions.

Imagine if we redirected twenty per cent of our working week away from computer screens, social media, and redundant meetings and instead contributed this time to our communities and the causes we care for? Imagine how different our world would feel if we came together to be with others every week - to build abundant communities.

As I shared in this talk , if every person in the UK gave two hours a week to volunteering, we would create a 'workforce' bigger than the NHS. The NHS contributes about 3.6 billion hours a year to our communities. The able population of the U K volunteering for two hours a week equates to more than five billion hours. Imagine the possibilities.

Family - hard work - leisure - hard work - community - hard work - repeat

I am not making the case that we must live an existence of intense labour whereby we continuously wreck ourselves! Indeed, one of my favourite books is?Leisure: The Basis of Culture ?by Josef Pieper. It is a stunning testament to the need to enjoy the good life by spending time immersed in leisure.

But I am making the case that living with a sense of purpose that inspires us to dedicate our time to our family, community, and planet is a beautiful way to live and the surest path to building a better world.

We have built a world that thoroughly uses us (and for some people, exploits us) in the wrong way.

We have it within our power to change this.

In my next article, I will outline some ways we do this.

Thank you for reading.

I wish you well and take care.

I would like to thank the 675 people who have joined this community so far. It really means a lot. I am slowly building Ways to Build a Better World, including working on my first documentary. You can sign up for updates and join our wider community at my website here . For now, thank you for being here and good luck to you in how you're working to build a better world.

#purpose #community #volunteering #wellbeing