For The Rest Of Your Life

First jobs, especially when so many have gone before you, can have hazardous effects on your wellbeing. But then again, this is not restricted to you first job. Apparently it gets easier over time.

Physically, in your first job, or when you start a new job, you happily get to do all the menial tasks that the stable boy does. You show up at 7am in the office when the lights aren’t even on, and leave when the janitor gives you the funny look as she refills the toilet rolls at 11pm. But while the stable boy gets to play with the horses when he waters them, you get to play with the photocopying machine when your boss tells you to photocopy 500 pages, double-sided, stapled into landscape booklets ready for the meeting at 10am that day. And then for that same meeting, make 50 cups of coffee/tea, whichever each executive prefers and according to their tastes of milk and sugar and even the time of when they would want it during the meeting. After that, take minutes of the whole meeting, which means you can’t leave for a toilet break even though the others can, order their lunches, again according to each executive’s taste and from which store, miss your own lunch, and at the end of the meeting, clear up, wash the cups and collect the booklets that are left behind, and do what your boss orders again as response to the meeting. And you look at your boss who earns a 6-figure salary each month and wonder if you're ever going to reach there before you die.

Mentally, it’s pretty easy. You just know you’re going to do this for the rest of your life. And then it all goes downhill from here emotionally, financially, socially, and just your life in general. It’s so comforting to know this after you’ve slaved off for the past 15 years to get an education to prepare you for your oyster.

I don’t think our ancestors had it any easier, and it’s not likely our descendents will too. I can’t look into the future, but there are plenty of examples in history where we’ve got it all wrong if we think our lives are going to be what we expect it to be. Abaraham, Moses, David, Esther, Ruth, all the apostles, Paul, and, um, a whole bunch of other people in the Bible we haven’t got to know better, not to mention all the inspiring stories of people we hear about in our modern culture, and what about the people whom we are in contact with everyday who do great things but we just never see! These people started way off from where they ended up, and I have been assured by one of these people, who now can afford a comfortable vehicle and eating well from driving taxis and babysitting me, that I will not end up how I think I will end up. Ten years is a blink of an eye, he says, and many things can happen in ten years I’m sure.

And what he says is true. Apart from his personal experience, there is sound advice from Jesus himself, saying “who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? (Mt 6:27) Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Mt 6:34). To be frank, that last statement sound like something out of a self-help book rather than from the mouth of Jesus. But then again, the Bible is the best self-help book there is on the market, with Jesus being the only worthy motivational speaker, and God the incomparable movie director in the universe. Ever.

Many, O Lord my God, are the wonders You have done.

The things You planned for us no one can recount to You;

were I to speak and tell of them, they would be too many to declare.

Psalm 40:13