Some lives are inspired by the examples of others; some are inspired by nothing other than making money, which is of course, often the driving force for nearly everyone. As I type out this column, I feel the forces in my fingertips of the many genius computer nerds who created the machine and the software that make it work. I feel the presence of those who packed the box it was shipped in and Fedexed™ it to my post office box. I know the people who carried it from the airport to the post office and the people who gave me my notice that my computer had arrived.
I drive a vehicle designed by engineers and visionaries, and manufactured by others who polished, fit and finished the last details of the four-wheeled mechanism. I know that the oil must be changed by another human, and this should be repeated every three months. I carry the computer I ordered via the Internet, that world-changing entity that exists only as electrical pulses coursing around the world, which itself is mastered and coordinated by millions of people. I open the door to my home, the house made by carpenters and electricians and plumbers, and take off my parka made in Canada by expert factory seamstresses, into my warm abode, heated by another person I know, who delivers the heating oil to my thirsty furnace.
Getting hungry, I order some fast food using a phone, made again by humans somewhere in Bell country and the short-order cook who transforms the ground beef that was processed from some slab of cow butchered by someone in another province and then delivered in a truck by a driver and loaded on a plane and flown, again by someone I know, to my community. This piece of hamburger is now cooked by another person, someone I see usually on coffee break or on payday. My pay is processed by the guy sitting next to me, paying me for my hard earned dollar and transferred tomy bank account through other people in another town, who I know by voice alone.
After sitting down and setting up my computer, I bash out this column and email it to others who work in the same industry, the information sent to the editor and proof read by yet another editor before being laid out by a graphic designer using a program designed by dozens if not hundreds of others. The magazine is printed out at some shop that used to be controlled by the now infamous Conrad Black, who made it his job to have a swell time at shareholders’ expenses.
The television, manufactured in Japan, brings this inane news to me by some talking head and informs me that the ink that is drying out on this page is tainted by scandal, which is reported by swarms of nosy humans and disseminated to the world using satellites that were made in Ottawa, again by humans in white coats.
What’s my point in all this, you may ask?
Everything we see and feel and use on a daily basis is made by someone with a job. There are jobs everywhere; it’s just a matter of figuring out which one is the one you want to work at, a job you really want to do.
Jobs to many people are just incomes a way of paying the rent. So many people are unhappy with their work because it is just that, an income. Making a job work for you and making it something worthwhile, while of course making money, is the secret that not too many know, a secret that is now revealed to you, yes, the average working Joe-slash-Jane. Working towards getting a job is something many people skip over; making the life they lead a dull and dreary existence, nine to five, Monday to Friday.
I say to all those who are still young: the opportunity to choose the job you want should not be taken lightly. It could be the difference of making it or just breaking even, or worse, not making it at all.
