Is profit your motivator?.. or might there be something more fundamental?
I’ve experienced a confluence of conversations, written ideas and experience over the last few days that’s led me to a new insight. Strangley, it should have been obvious all along.
I’ve always worked for money. At least, I thought I did. Now I realise the opposite: I’ve never worked for money. Instead I work for a sense of security and stability, I work for a sense of community and camradery in a lonely culture… I also work to serve.
But I do live within a culture that gives similar praise to Mother Teresa, as to Richard Branson, but creating huge wealth for oneself and performing selfless service are not the same.
To put it more starkly, when we die… our relationship with money ends and it is handed to others. Selfless service however, lives on through the people affected, even indirectly. Through them, your service is no longer your story, but their story of you: your legacy.
This means that with money, we are all simply stewards… Caretakers of a resource.
I don’t want to be a caretaker of an ever increasing pile that takes the resources of many people to manage, particularly if that resource is as passive as money.
What I do want to be, is a person in the service of others for a common good… but that’s an aspiration I would like. In reality, all I need is felt security, a friendly community and rich meaning in life.
Consumerism and Capitalism are woefully inefficient forms of getting these needs met. Is profit really your motivator? Or do you dare to seek something more fundamental.