that her life cannot, and should not, be defined by the work she does every day.
looking back, the career has never been particularly smooth. she had to learn a great deal, to keep trying, to make an effort every-single day. and yet, somehow, it never feels like enough. why does she always feel that she is not enough? not just at work, but in almost every relationship she’s had. is it something wrong with her? is there something she’s constantly trying to prove, to others or perhaps to herself?
then recently, she’s started to realize that after all it’s just work. oh come on. you getpaid to do your job. that because you’re good at your job then your employer pays you money. stick with this, you don’t have to devote every bit of yourself to it. your time, your energy, your thoughts. it must have something left for the rest of your life, beyond your job.
and yet, she keeps doing exactly that. which is ridiculous, the amount of effort one puts into things that perhaps don’t matter nearly as much as one thinks they do. and what for? don’t you have anything else to look forward to?
there’s this sake place called Tasu+. a restaurant, a shop, a franchise of sorts. I’m not entirely sure how to describe it, but there’s something about its spirit that I admire: the dedication, the sense of purpose, the idea of devoting yourself to something you genuinely believe in. and perhaps that’s what I’ve been missing, perhaps that’s what I’ve been looking for all along: to have something you believe in so deeply that you’re willing to suffer for it, not because anyone expects you to, not because you’re being paid, not even because someone will recognize your effort.
simply because it matters to you. and there is suffering in that, of course.
I know something of it. I suffer sometimes in my work, trying to stay true to my principles, trying to deliver the best that I can, to deliver things properly even when nobody asks me to, even when it would be much easier not to care at all.
isn’t it much easier to not to care at all?
then it all seems rather absurd. what’s the point of trying so hard when nobody seems to care, when the effort goes unnoticed, when the standards you hold yourself to mean very little to anyone else? why bother?
yet, I cannot quite convince myself that caring less is the answer. perhaps the problem isn’t that I care too much, but that I’ve been giving so much of myself to something I don’t truly believe in. or perhaps I’ve confused doing something well with doing something meaningful.
I don’t know.
still, isn’t there something beautiful about having something to pursue, something worth the effort, worth the suffering, even when nobody else understands why. isn’t that so beautiful to wake up every morning and know that there is something, somewhere, that you genuinely want to move towards.
isn’t that be beautiful?