Tying All Ships to a Single Stake

When we take a look at our lives, we see a brief preschool period that we barely remember, followed by a long school period, and then a much longer working period. In fact, even during our school years, after a certain grade, we start to think and live with a focus on our future careers. We must attend a good high school because we need to get into a good university. A good university, in turn, is the beginning of a good career.

Then we dive into our professional lives with speed and excitement. We often have career expectations, even ambitions. We usually focus not on what the journey will turn us into, but on where we will end up and how much we will earn. We preoccupy ourselves with how people will see us rather than what kind of person we will become, with prestige rather than respect, with reputation without credibility, with power without authority. We work, we compete, we fight, we complain, and if we're lucky, we develop a little, but there is always a ruler measuring our height, a single stake to which all ships are tied. The years pass quickly, one after another, and labels come, but often late! How much effort, how much time, and how much sacrifice there is behind them.

Then one day, we reach the end of our time on the stage of working life. We must leave our place to the younger generation. Or, while still halfway through our journey, storms rage at sea and uproot the stake from its place. At that moment, when we realize that the stake to which we tied all the ships can no longer belong to us, what remains? Who are we from that moment on? What bonds, what identities, what roles remain that still make us feel alive and valuable? We suddenly realize with pain that the only thing that has made us feel meaningful and valuable for years is our job, and now it is gone. Yet, how much have we sacrificed for it—how many hopes, 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 real, genuine, and worthwhile moments...

Of course, if people cannot find meaning and a higher purpose in their work, they cannot sustain doing that work for long. Establishing a connection between work and meaning is one of the most important factors for people to be content and resilient in their professional lives. On the other hand, having work as the only area where meaning is found is equally damaging. Because these people eventually become workaholics. Because they only feel meaningful when they are working, they eventually start to produce more work than is necessary or than those around them can handle. Research shows that these people negatively impact their own health and well-being first, and then especially that of their employees.

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 much more susceptible to negative effects and illnesses. Research also shows that people who find meaning only in their work lives tend to live shorter lives after retirement compared to those who have meaning and purpose in different areas of their lives and have achieved a work-life balance.

That's precisely why the more differently we moor our ships, the greater our chances of protecting them in storms, and the more likely we are to still have ships that can continue on their journey if we ever have to abandon that single mooring or lose it.

Sanem Ömürlü