I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live

One of my dearest friends, Robbo, once sent me a quote by George Bernard Shaw after he had been blown away by Jeff Goldblum flawlessly reciting it word-for-word. It reads:

"This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."

I could write an entire book on this passage. Maybe one day I will!

I think it is timeless. I believe that it is utterly inspiring. It is a call to stand up, to find your purpose, to work hard, serve others, be something to somebody, to let your light before others, not to be a victim, to rejoice that every day is a gift and that gives us a chance to leave the world in a better place than you found it.

For me, something is compelling about this passage for the times that we live in.

At the time of writing (September 2022), the country where I live, the UK, is socially, politically, and economically in a bit of a mess. So I wouldn't blame anyone for believing that it feels rather hopeless.

But I don't believe we should feel hopeless.

What if these are signs not of decay but of regeneration? What if these times of chaos can be the storm before the calm?

I believe this could be true if (and it's a big if) we choose to respond in the right way. Because we have a choice to make. We always do. We can choose to blame, lament, point (or even wag) the finger. We can type, yell and scream with shrill voices. Or we can step up. We can find our mighty purpose. We can focus not on what's wrong but on what we can do right.

We can come together to weave a genuine togetherness back into the tapestry of our frayed society.

This won't be easy. It rarely is. But we should rejoice that the hard work it will take (and it will be hard work) is something to rejoice as opposed to being deflated by.

An observation about well-being in the workplace

In the Western World, especially on platforms like LinkedIn and Medium, a lot is written about wellbeing. In part, this is a good and necessary thing.

However, I think we are in danger of making our world worse, not better, in the way we speak about wellbeing.

As I discuss in my lectures on Spiral Dynamics, the capitalistic market system has been highly successful at lifting society out of poverty and building a better world. But it has also been exploitative and destructive. This includes our well-being.

Well-being, of course, exists on a spectrum. At the harshest end of the spectrum are people that work in mines, factories, and other hard-labour endeavours in the lesser financially developed world and are the most ill-treated.

At the lighter but still significant end of the spectrum, many people are left feeling unwell by work pressures. In sum, we can make improvements in almost every market.

My contention is that I don't think we need to work fewer hours. And I don't believe we need to work less hard. I just think we need to focus our time and contribution in different directions.

What if we redirected twenty per cent of our working week away from computer screens, social media, and redundant meetings and instead contributed this time to our communities and the causes we care for?

Imagine how different our world would feel if we came together to be with others every week - to build abundant communities.

As I shared in this talk, if every person in the UK gave two hours a week to volunteering, we would create a 'workforce' bigger than the NHS. The NHS contributes about 3.6 billion hours a year to our communities. The able population of the U K volunteering for two hours a week equates to more than five billion hours. Imagine the possibilities.

Family - hard work - leisure - hard work - community - hard work - repeat

I am not making the case that we must live an existence of intense labour whereby we continuously wreck ourselves! Indeed, one of my favourite books is Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper. It is a stunning testament to the need to enjoy the good life by spending time immersed in leisure.

But I am making the case that living with a sense of purpose that inspires us to dedicate our time to our family, community, and planet is a beautiful way to live and the surest path to building a better world.

We have built a world that thoroughly uses us the wrong way. However, we have it within our power to change this. In my next article, I will outline some ways we do this.

Thank you for reading.

Take care,

Benjamin