Putting All One’s Eggs in One Basket

When we take a look back at our lives, we see a brief pre-school period that we can barely remember, followed by a long period at school, and then a working life that is many times longer. In fact, even whilst we are at school, from a certain year group onwards, we begin to think and live with a focus on our future careers. We must go to a good secondary school because we need to get into a good university. A good university, in turn, is the starting point for a good working life.

Then, with a sense of urgency and excitement, we plunge into our working lives. We often have career aspirations, and even ambitions. Generally, we focus not on what the journey will turn us into, but on where we’ll end up and how much we’ll earn. We fill our minds not with what sort of people we will become, but with how others will see us; not with respect, but with prestige; not with credibility, but with reputation; not with competence, but with the possession of power. We work, we compete, we fall out, we grumble; if we’re lucky, we grow a little, but there is always just one yardstick by which we measure ourselves, and just one peg to which we tie all our ships. The years pass swiftly, one after the other, and labels follow—though often belatedly! How much labour, how much time and how much sacrifice lie behind them.

Then one day, we find ourselves at the end of the time allotted to us on the stage of working life. We must make way for the younger generation. Or, whilst we’re still in the middle of the journey, storms may rage at sea and uproot that single stake from its place. At that very moment—the moment we realise that the stake to which we’ve moored all our ships can no longer belong to us—what remains? Who are we from that moment onwards? What bonds, what identities, what roles remain to make us feel that we are still alive and that we matter? Suddenly, we realise with a pang that the only thing that has made us feel meaningful and valued for all these years was, it turns out, our work – and that is now gone. And yet, how much have we sacrificed for it – how many aspirations, how many passions, how many friendships, how many family ties, how many doctor’s appointments, how many reading festivals, how many graduation balls, how many genuine, authentic and worthwhile moments…

Of course, if a person cannot find meaning and a higher purpose in their work, they cannot endure doing that job for long. Establishing a connection between work and meaning is one of the most important factors in people’s ability to remain content and resilient in their working lives. On the other hand, it is equally damaging if the workplace is the only area where meaning is found. Because, over time, these people turn into workaholics. As they can only feel a sense of purpose whilst working, after a while they end up producing more work than is necessary or than those around them can cope with. Research shows that this behaviour negatively affects first and foremost their own health and well-being, and subsequently that of the staff under their supervision.

As Viktor Frankl states in his book *Man’s Search for Meaning*, people who suddenly lose their sense of meaning quickly lose hope in the face of difficulties and obstacles, becoming far more vulnerable to negative effects and illness. Furthermore, research indicates that people who find a sense of meaning solely in their working lives tend to live shorter lives after retirement compared to those who have a sense of meaning and purpose in various areas of their lives and have achieved a healthy work-life balance.

This is precisely why, the more we moor our ships to different moorings, the greater our chances of protecting them during storms; and should we one day need to let go of that single mooring—or lose it—we will still have ships capable of continuing their journey.

Sanem Ömürlü