People have been asking me and I have been asking people if they are happy now. And, in 90% of the cases, happiness always has something to do with job:
"Yes I am ok but if I had a better contract..."
"No, I need a better job"
"Yes, but my parents are always telling me to find something better"
"With this job I can't do this, I can´t do that, I can´t go here, I can´t go there..."
You can hear hundreds of excuses and the strangest thing is, people are never happy with their current situation. If they are jobless, they say:
"Oh, any kind of job would be great. Just need something".
If they have a job:
"Shit, I don't like my boss, I don't like the people I am working with, this job is not great, I should be earning more, etc". The thing is, what ever they find, they will never be happy. If they earn a very good salary, normally, they will have to work 10, 12, 14 hrs a day. And if these guys find a way to go out with friends, they will be sitting in the bar complaining how difficult their life is.
In Portugal, people found a way to fight against this situation. They manage a way to get subsidies from the government and reject any job offer they may get.
My experience tells me that mothers and grandmothers like to go to the hairdresser and say to their friends that their son or grandson is doctor, engineer or scientist! I've seen it so many times, specially with my grandmother.
For example, my mother cried like a baby when I went to Copenhagen to be a Bike-Taxi driver.
The truth is that even being a hard job, I had a wonderful time in Copenhagen cause I met more people than during my Erasmus and, when we were not working, we were sitting on the taxi, talking about random things, eating fake Nutella, go to Christiania, etc .But the best of all is that, working 8h/day I could earn until 300€ during the month of July and 100€/day in May and June. Isn't it great? After 3 months I went back to Portugal with almost 5000€.
If you could save this in a year, wouldn't be great? How many engineers, scientists ordoctors can save 5000€ in 3 months?
What is happiness? Having hundreds of thousands of € (or , £,$, PLN, whatever)??? I think that happiness means different things to different people. I miss those times when I was in Portugal, earning average 500€/month, bodyboarding with Falcão or Mountain-biking with João Gomes before go to work, everyday have wonderful times with my girlfriend Ana :), still have time to hangout with my friends and practice in the group Bomboémia.
Maybe other people miss the days of full bank account and the days with a good job.
If my mother's goal was raise me and make me a happy person I can say that she made a wonderful job. Right now, I have a job with no stress at all, I hang out with my friends before and after work, Snowboard season is about to start and... I am living together with my girlfriend. What else do I need?
If she is proud of me, I hope so. And I really hope she understands that I am happy.
PS: Orlando, how's your job? :P
1 comentários:
You made a very good point Daniel. We really do associate happiness with our jobs. I do believe that's because of the amount of time we spend there daily. That and the stress of getting to work, the fact that people come home and are still thinking about their jobs. Our parents generation grew up with very little and saw their own parents work like mules. Our grandparents happiness consisted in buying their children the things they never had, our parents happiness consisted on giving us the comfort they never had. Throu out time, having money meant stability and hapiness. You didn't had to work, you were never hungry, you had servents and a good life.
Now days, like you say, having a great job that pays good means that you are either stealing, working too much or are indeed very lucky.
Like you, I'm happy with my job, it gives me freetime to do the things I love and helps me pay all my bills. It's almost stressfree and I contact with a lot of different people, which is great 'cause it gives me so much writting material.
I guess that makes us, two very happy people =oD (Sorry about the big comment, oh and by the way, loved you on Uncle Scrooge's face xD)
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