Many of us are fearful of making changes in our work lives—fear is a natural human condition. We feel less threatened when we stick with the familiar. As long as we are receiving a paycheck, we tolerate the dissatisfaction. Better to just play it safe.
But the safety net we preserve requires a big trade-off. It often denies us the opportunity to experience work that makes us happy, that is consistent with our desires while still meeting our monetary needs. Yet many of us strap ourselves into jobs in which the only reward is money.
We breed cynicism when we treat our work as nothing more than a financial equation, a necessity we tolerate in order to acquire funds to live, with the hope of somehow achieving success and happiness along the way. That’s really most of us want to be happy. We spend 80,000 hours of our lives at work. Yet, we view happiness as something to be achieved “outside” of work. We hire ourselves out on Monday through Friday and “live” for the weekends.
Most of us didn’t choose our careers to fulfill a purpose or mission. On the contrary, we just looked for “a good job with a good company,” reflecting such criteria as pay, title and security. We reasoned that if we could “get a foot in the door” and work hard, our careers would grow over time, actually, that our careers and work lives would just happen “by accident.” Because of this, many of us have careers today that are just “accidents waiting to happen.” Everyday business decisions, a reorganization plan, an acquisition by another comply, a relocation out of the country of the company, can throw our work lives into danger. But despite this uncertainty, some of us still cling to our jobs, dissatisfying as they may be. Can’t take that risk!
“Hanging on” involves risk too. For when we sacrifice pleasure for pay, our work lacks dignity, uses our energy and, ultimately, breaks our spirit. An unhappy, unfulfilled work life contributes to an unhappy, unfulfilled personal life. Happiness in work, as happiness in love, demands a measure of risk.
Author Marsha Simetar suggests that if you “do what you love, the money will follow.” Certainly this may seem a bit risky, perhaps idealistic, but it is undoubtedly true that people who love what they do find ways to make the most money.
1. From the first paragraph we learn that （ ）
2. By saying that “the safety net we preserve requires a big trade-off” (paragraph 2, line 1) the（ ）
3. We learn from the text that（ ）
4. According to the text, when the changes throw our work lives into danger, we will usually（ ）
5. The purpose of the author in writing the text is to （ ）
