Man is too small to free himself, but big enough to free the world.

The title of this article is a quote that has stayed with me since my teenage years. I cant recall whom I heard it from but as young as I was, I knew it had weight.

Lets be honest, over the past decade, the world around us has slowly been folding in on itself and the post pandemic years all but cemented what we already felt was wrong with what life had become. It reminds me of Uncle Ben, or Aunt May (depending which Spiderman you choose), that we developed so much power in technology, in media, in efficiencies. Yet I don’t think anyone stopped to really question what the responsibilities would be.

I’ve always worked in a traditional 9–5 job and have so for the past 17 years. From before anyone had heard of Facebook or even a Blackberry for that matter. Suffice it to say I’ve done my time and earned both stripes and lashes during my career. However, one thing that has always been oddly apparent to me is the disconnect between what business wants and what people want. Its no secret that there were unprecedent levels of unhappiness in the workplace in 2022 and it seems to have carried over into 2023. Terms like “Great Resignation” and “Quiet Quitting” are became colloquial terms overnight. I’ve noticed an alarming number of posts on Twitter and LinkedIn recently from people leaving jobs either to pursue something that they love or simply removing themselves from an environment they felt was toxic. That in of itself tells me that there is something fundamentally broken in the relationship with meaningful work.

Before leaving my last job in December 2022, there were many times towards the end that I’d find myself battling to connect the work I was doing with purpose and an alignment with what my heart wanted. I found myself wrestling depression for the better part of 18 months, a grown man hiding away from his child, crying. Even so far as wondering if I wanted to still be alive. Why the torture? Why not leave? Simple, I, like most of the working population, need the paycheck to survive. A frightening reality is that everyone thinks they’re middle class until they miss a paycheck.

Anyway I digress, what I really wanted to dive into is why I feel there is this disconnect and why I’m willing to put money on the fact that more people than we could possibly imagine, have the same exact outlook.

We simply weren’t meant to work the way we do today, sorry not sorry but we just aren’t. Regardless of what job you do or what industry, the goal is singular, to sell something and get people to pay for it. Now that in itself isn’t the issue, the issue is exponential growth.

We do realize we live on a planet with finite resources right?

Yet year on year, regardless of industry, we trample our mental health into oblivion to chase double digit growth that your average workers will never reap the rewards of. Since 2020 my salary went up by a total of 6%… in 3 years. I’ve gone backwards but I, like the rest of us, ensured growth for the business, better than pre-covid. What’s wrong with this picture?

What’s wrong is that we as human being’s have lost purpose. We’ve normalized the hamster wheel to a point where pursuing your purpose is either seen as ludicrous because its now abnormal. Or its just reserved for the elite who can afford to throw caution to the wind because they don’t know the price of bread.

Purpose is what we were put here to do, every human being came here with something to offer the world. I know that you, I and probably most people, lie awake at night feeling like we can do more. Yearning for a life where you can do for the world, something that makes it better for you being here. We want to leave a legacy, as Nathan Harmon said “Every single one of you were meant to leave your fingerprints on history”

I’m pursuing my purpose for the first time in almost 20 years, by using my love for the written word, to transform the way we see the world and our place in it. I wanted to be a writer when I left school but I was talked out of it by my family. “You cant make any money from that”. I came to realize if I was going to be happy with what I put into the world, It was no longer optional, I had to lean into what made my heart beat. I will be a writer, somehow because I have to! I don’t know where its going to lead or how I’m going to scale it. What I do know is how it feels to be alive with a fire inside my heart, chasing a dream important to me.

This search for purpose is why I’m writing this, why I ask you. No, I beg you to treat it like the sacred thing that it is so that you can leave behind something more meaningful than a desk that will be filled in a month’s time after you’re gone.

I leave you with one of my all time favourite quotes.

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” Mark Twain.

#MeaningfulWork #SouthAfrica #Purpose #Motivation #Work