Why Do We Do What We Do?
The question that justifies our purpose in life
--
“Keep doing what you do, Mike.” — Mithell Garabedian, Spotlight
Spotlight is a 2015 drama/history movie that earned itself the most prestigious awards at the Oscar 2016, Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. It captured an actual event about a team of investigative journalists who worked for The Boston Globe that was covering a story about child-abuse cases by priests in Boston. The story managed to uncover hundreds of more victim stories who reached out after the story was published.
I couldn’t help but think after watching the movie,
Is that what we’re supposed to do with our lives? Doing something that’s actually important? or matters?
Needless to say, I’m no better.
I started my career at the age of 20 with one of the most common jobs of all in the 21st century; working for a startup company in the marketing department. I wasn’t a software engineer or a product manager, but it was still common enough among the fresh graduates of my graduation year.
I spent at least one-third of a day at work every day which was not a small amount of time. A regular job requires at least 40 hours/week on average. That would account for 36% of my time in a week minus the average sleeping hours.
Taking this statistic into consideration, a full-time job isn’t something that I take lightly. There’s a reason why it’s called ‘full-time’ and with that many hours taken from my hand, shouldn’t it be something that’s actually meaningful, at least for myself?
Even if it pays the bill more than my actual expense, I do want it to somewhat have a nobility to it. If ‘meaningful’ is too far to reach, then it would have to at least have a specific purpose. Probably not so much for the sense of ‘giving back to society’ if it can’t fit in that box, but more for a fair justification of why this is all worth it.
The Motion of Titles and Prestige
At the beginning of their career, everyone seems to be looking for the same things; stability, title, and/or a big salary.
