Roundabout Ways of Our Working Life

Once they said of my path:

You’ll meet ocean of death,

And I turned back my way.

What I see ahead since:

Wild and blind path extends…

Akiko Yosano, “Cowardice”

What it’s about?

Probably, about lack of straightforwardness and frequent inconsistency in movement of ours to numerous different directions…

In the course of life we start endless multitude of various things. How much of them are brought to the end?  Each of us is likely to give at least four absolutely different answers to this simple question. The first answer – is veritable and personal. The second one – is truthful and personal. The third one – is veritable and for everyone around. The forth – truthful and for everyone around…

Without plunging deep in thought, we usually choose the forth answer. It’s the easiest one. And everyone around always agrees with it. “I started many things, and all what I started was mostly brought to the end. And all those that were not – are connected with objective reasons or with necessity to refuse the original idea, thoughts, and chosen pathlets owing to the force of significant risks”. Why “pathlets”? Just because what we’ll try to sure – it’s to persuade everybody that real WAYS and PATHS are chosen correctly. Why, we always reach till the end all WAYS and PATHS. Carefully, avoiding challenges, without straining many nerves, in the course of this movement we do wend it, and pass till the end. What more – everybody around is wending in the same manner. Carefully, avoiding challenges, without straining many nerves… And calling pathlets as WAYS… That’s why they will accept and agree easily with truthfulness of our forth answer, agreeing with their personal convenience for themselves in the matter of fact. “He is like me”.

How to become the person eminent for others, a real man bearing the verity, man of principle, exacting man? For that, it’s enough to choose the third answer – truthful for everybody around. It’s enough to admit that some WAYS turned out to be just little pathlets, that we were on wrong way. To say more – it turned out that some WAYS were pathlets because we weren’t wending right or not based on principle and not consistent enough. “BUT! We are ready to admit our mistakes! And to try afterwards to differ WAYS from pathlets, and reach the final destination of the WAYS. Then, there are not so many things which were neglected. The non-neglected things are much more, as well as our direct and bright WAYS”. Your success is evident in this case. Counting aloud all exceptions, we raise the following rule in surrounding heads – “His WAYS are direct and bright. He is honest, fair and exacting. Even towards to himself. He admits and always aspires to rectify his misdeeds. By the same token, his misdeeds are very few”. Anyway, the third answer is not so convenient for environment. But it brings us nearer to the real lay of the land.

 All the abovementioned was about what we say aloud. What we are ready to admit inside and own up to surroundings. And it’d be better to stop here, because the first and second answers are deeper and more sincere. It comes very often that people don’t even reflect on them as well as on if there is some difference between them. They just choose internally the third or the forth answer as the most convenient, and use them to substitute the first and second ones, and making from the chosen variant the unique and the veritable answer. At long last, life is easier in so doing, and it’s easier to work. Or it’d be more interesting to make it consciously and not to turn into a walker of “wild and blind paths”? So, then, it’d be worthy to try and give response including the first and second answers. Inside and personally – for a starter.

The second answer – truthful and personal. There are many things we made run, we struggled for, many things we upheld and disputed. We wended our WAYS, paths and nooks. Towards our aims. We passed them often. Till halfway.  More seldom – till the end. And a bit more seldom – till that end which we had aimed being at the start line. Sometimes – on our ways we stopped dead. Turning around and going back. But come hell or high water – our aim never ceased to be. Well, we gave it up sometimes. Sometime and somewhere – through incomprehension or vagueness of what is the best way to do something, how to attain and take on the aim to its full. Or just through being tired of going towards to our aim, having been aware even that it was “needed” to overcome, but having emitted all the steam and kept possible interest to it no longer, we turned off our WAYS and gave them up. Having preferred wild and blind roundabout paths for a very short time. Just to let a chance to find during that time another aim. We are likely to be wrong in some cases for all that. If there were another chance – we may have really acted differently. But, however, there often were objective reasons too. We hardly were lazy and what can be said surely – it’s in no ways by cowardice that we refused, turned off or stopped wending. Acknowledging to ourselves by choosing the second answer to an uneasy question, we are truthful. That’s a good point to make a start in the way to enable changing something. Start changing it in your life and your work as well as in general attitude to their course. 

Do you want to be cruel to yourself?  Or, more exactly – absolutely fair. Then, try and think about verity. About the verity for you personally, I mean, about the first answer. The nature of verity represents weighted exactingness and invariability. It’s static. From the verity point, I mean verity for self – all our “rethinkings” and “change-mindings”, our “tiredness” and all our turn-offs as well as referencing to circumstances’ influencing power – all of that and sundry brought us to reject our aim, to turn-off the WAY. The further - the more. Bluntly speaking, we are hardly ever wending to somewhere for something. What’s more often is that we are staying. In the nook. It’s the world, the very “circumstances” around us are right passing by. But we substitute their movement in our understanding, being sure inside out that it’s about us who move, it’s about us who aspire. Quite the contrary – when we stop or give up our way, sure is that we come to such decision solely on our own. Without any circumstances’ influence. No matter what circumstances and reasons are there – at long last, the final decision is always ours only. And, moreover, how much true is that these circumstances’ real power is  so categorically restricting and influential, to be able to make us give up and stop doing something, stop our aspiration to the aim, or stop our movement at all? The statistics as usual is awfully boring and annoying thing. It admits no circumstances. Nor any matter of life and death which had probably driven many of our enterprises back, which served as reason for us to give up, turn off, get tired, failed to reach the aim till the end… It’s to count and give a simple total: we often stay dead, we often refuse without valid reasons, we often don’t reach our aims and often deceive ourselves, being afraid of such verity.

It doesn’t mean certainly that all the abovewritten represents Your verity. It may turn out that it’s not truth at all, then. But concerning Your four questions about substantiveness, consistency and meaningfulness in Your movement, Your working life and in Your life, in general – they are very likely to exist.

P.S. In reality everything is much better. Or?