Because it would go unnoticed and largely unappreciated. Seriously.
I do not know about small companies but when it comes to large corporations, all of its employees are dispensable. Any one of them can drop off from the face of the earth and the company will just rehire a new person as replacement. No tears, no regrets, nothing. Okay, maybe a wreath at your funeral but that is about it.
The people who will miss you most, mourn for you and basically feel like crap when you are gone are your family and close friends. To them, you are indispensable and nobody could ever replace you. You could be someone's mother, sister, daughter, wife, best friend, father, brother, son, husband or soul mate. To them, you matter a lot. Your lives are intertwined and you depended on each other in all of your lives. To them, losing you is like losing a large part of their lives, leaving a void that only time could heal.
So, then. why do so many people work till late hours every day, stay fiercely loyal to their employers and practically spent more time in the office rather than at home with their loved ones?
This is one question that really beats me. It is something I find hard to understand. Admittedly, money is something everyone needs in this material world but do we really need that much?
Will working to death to buy a palatial house be worth it if you hardly have time to enjoy the house with your family? Will tonnes of money in the bank be worth it if you neglected your family and friends to the point that you have none left and you end up spending your retirement days sitting alone in a huge empty house? Will becoming the company vice president through long working hours be worth it if it means you don't get to see the birth of your first child, participate in his activities, watch him grow and finally did not even get to know your own child?
Will working to the bone for a company be worth it at all if you were to fall dead one day without going on the tour around Europe vacation you promised your family/partner or fulfilling your lifelong dream of becoming an artist or fulfilling any of your promises of 'maybe next time when I am free' to your family / friends? Would it be worth it at all to actually die after spending most of your life at work and none of it actually enjoying life with your family and friends?
Well, I think it is really not worth it at all! No money in this world could buy the simple pleasure of watching your firstborn learn his first words or the wonderful moments you spent with your loved ones or just appreciating nature with your loved ones. Nothing is more precious that your family and friends.
So, why does work always take precedence? Why do people keep saying 'I have work. Maybe tomorrow'and the tomorrow never comes?
Sure, we all have commitments, mortgages to pay, bills to settle, debts to clear. A steady income is imperative for us to survive but it does not mean we have to put 90% of our time in it.
That is why,one of my favorite saying is always: Work is just a means to an end, not an end to the means.
It is with this reasoning that I am now working hard (I know it sounds contradictory to this whole post but read on...) so that I could quit my day job and spend more time with my son at home.
I am admittedly putting more hours into my own freelance work at night, which is taking up most of my spare time, but it is with the goal of quitting my day job to stay home. I, too, have bills to pay, but I am not making work a priority in my life. My priority is my family. And perhaps spiritual development. I intend to quit my day job soon and this would mean more time to my family and less time at the office.
So, to all the workaholics out there, do stop and think about the time you spent at the office. Is it worth it in the end? The best way to think if it is worth it, imagine you were told you have only two more hours to live. What were your first few regrets about things you don't get to do? I can bet that it is not about the report that was supposed to be due tomorrow!
Life is fragile. We all know we will die one day so make wise decisions now so that you will not regret it later. Go out and Dream, Discover and Explore!
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Friday
I can't stand my in-laws!
There, that's so much better.
Well, not really. Hubby knows about it but I don't expect him to understand or do anything about it because they are his parents after all.
Perhaps it is the way I was raised. Or the amount of freedom I was given in my childhood. Or that my dad is more of a strict and stern disciplinarian than a nagger while my mom is more or less a free spirit who allowed me immeasurable freedom. Even the years I spent with my grandmother (whom I truly loathed but that is another story) seemed like paradise compared to the agony of having to stay with my in-laws just several years ago before we finally moved into our own place after much begging on my side. (and several cold wars between yours truly and the in-laws).
Over here in Asia, it is the norm for children to continue staying with their parents even after they are married and over here filial piety means staying with your parents until they depart this world. Since, hubby is an only child, it was assumed that we would continue living with his parents till the end of days.
Oh, it was indeed the end of days. FOR ME! I was stifled, suffocated and literally tied. I could not step out the door without having to explain the whys and wherefores. Sure, I have often been told to be a good and obedient daughter-in-law but heck, if I was never an obedient daughter from the start, how could anyone expect me, of all people, to be obedient to a pair of strangers who became relatives through marriage??
My father-in-law nags. A lot. He is worse than a fly buzzing incessantly in your ear. Much, much worse. If ever there is a mission to get a spy to talk, he will be the perfect candidate to grill the spy as I am certain the spy will definitely buckle under all that non-stop droning of his nagging.
So imagine the torture. I think I would have enjoyed tearing out all my hair, rubbing salt in the tender scalp and scalding myself with hot boiling water more. So, in light of all his nagging and negativeness (oh, he also specialises in being Mr Wet Blanket of the World as in everything will eventually turn out wrong or bad and the glass is always empty, not half empty), my seemingly normal mother-in-law seemed, well, normal.
The two of them don’t get along. If not for some archaic notion that divorce is taboo, they would probably be staying on different sides of the globe by now. But too bad, that is not the case. They would quarrel over the littlest thing and it amazes me how they managed to stay together, sleep on the same bed, for so many years!
Anyway, the mother-in-law would treat me as a confidante and complain about her good-for-nothing husband and how he never contributed anything to the household. I listened and felt like shaking her and telling her to just get a divorce but wisely I kept quiet. I thought she liked me. I even sorta liked her (after all, we sorta share the same ‘enemy‘) and tolerated her complaints about her husband and even her gossips about her relatives. Until I found out she had been complaining about me behind my back to all and sundry. Why, that insidious, obsessive compulsive witch! Hubby is the one who tipped me off. When I asked him why she couldn’t just tell me face to face instead of complaining to the whole wide world, he said she told him that she didn’t want to ‘spoil’ her relationship with me.
Fine, I tried to forgive her. The last straw was after LR was born and she all but told my other grandma (the one I simply adore and not the one I loath) to get lost. We have already moved out by then and I have arranged for my grandma to stay with us for the first two months after LR was born to help us take care of a newborn. The witch, no doubt, became green with envy. She felt that since LR carries my husband’s family name, LR is her grandchild while my grandma, who is by right the great grandmother, is considered an 'outsider'. She actually went up to my grandma and told her to get lost and stop ‘keeping’ LR to herself. My grandma was hurt and initially she did not tell me. She packed and gave some excuse that she wanted to go home. It was only later that she told me (after much badgering from me) the whole sordid truth.
My mother-in-law is no longer in her youth. She is nearing 70 for goodness sake! And my grandma is nearing 90 so couldn’t she show at least some courtesy to my grandma? What she did was unforgivable. It made me realized that she is the type of person who will not stop at anything to get her way and that includes bullying her son and back-stabbing and hurting everyone around her.
Yep, I can’t stand both my in-laws and having to call them ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ is the worst thing I was forced to do in my life. Now, I avoid them like the plague and prayed that we do not ever have to stay with them again. I would rather drink rat poison, scrape my eyeballs out with a blunt fork and slowly pull my fingernails out one by one.
Well, not really. Hubby knows about it but I don't expect him to understand or do anything about it because they are his parents after all.
Perhaps it is the way I was raised. Or the amount of freedom I was given in my childhood. Or that my dad is more of a strict and stern disciplinarian than a nagger while my mom is more or less a free spirit who allowed me immeasurable freedom. Even the years I spent with my grandmother (whom I truly loathed but that is another story) seemed like paradise compared to the agony of having to stay with my in-laws just several years ago before we finally moved into our own place after much begging on my side. (and several cold wars between yours truly and the in-laws).
Over here in Asia, it is the norm for children to continue staying with their parents even after they are married and over here filial piety means staying with your parents until they depart this world. Since, hubby is an only child, it was assumed that we would continue living with his parents till the end of days.
Oh, it was indeed the end of days. FOR ME! I was stifled, suffocated and literally tied. I could not step out the door without having to explain the whys and wherefores. Sure, I have often been told to be a good and obedient daughter-in-law but heck, if I was never an obedient daughter from the start, how could anyone expect me, of all people, to be obedient to a pair of strangers who became relatives through marriage??
My father-in-law nags. A lot. He is worse than a fly buzzing incessantly in your ear. Much, much worse. If ever there is a mission to get a spy to talk, he will be the perfect candidate to grill the spy as I am certain the spy will definitely buckle under all that non-stop droning of his nagging.
So imagine the torture. I think I would have enjoyed tearing out all my hair, rubbing salt in the tender scalp and scalding myself with hot boiling water more. So, in light of all his nagging and negativeness (oh, he also specialises in being Mr Wet Blanket of the World as in everything will eventually turn out wrong or bad and the glass is always empty, not half empty), my seemingly normal mother-in-law seemed, well, normal.
The two of them don’t get along. If not for some archaic notion that divorce is taboo, they would probably be staying on different sides of the globe by now. But too bad, that is not the case. They would quarrel over the littlest thing and it amazes me how they managed to stay together, sleep on the same bed, for so many years!
Anyway, the mother-in-law would treat me as a confidante and complain about her good-for-nothing husband and how he never contributed anything to the household. I listened and felt like shaking her and telling her to just get a divorce but wisely I kept quiet. I thought she liked me. I even sorta liked her (after all, we sorta share the same ‘enemy‘) and tolerated her complaints about her husband and even her gossips about her relatives. Until I found out she had been complaining about me behind my back to all and sundry. Why, that insidious, obsessive compulsive witch! Hubby is the one who tipped me off. When I asked him why she couldn’t just tell me face to face instead of complaining to the whole wide world, he said she told him that she didn’t want to ‘spoil’ her relationship with me.
Fine, I tried to forgive her. The last straw was after LR was born and she all but told my other grandma (the one I simply adore and not the one I loath) to get lost. We have already moved out by then and I have arranged for my grandma to stay with us for the first two months after LR was born to help us take care of a newborn. The witch, no doubt, became green with envy. She felt that since LR carries my husband’s family name, LR is her grandchild while my grandma, who is by right the great grandmother, is considered an 'outsider'. She actually went up to my grandma and told her to get lost and stop ‘keeping’ LR to herself. My grandma was hurt and initially she did not tell me. She packed and gave some excuse that she wanted to go home. It was only later that she told me (after much badgering from me) the whole sordid truth.
My mother-in-law is no longer in her youth. She is nearing 70 for goodness sake! And my grandma is nearing 90 so couldn’t she show at least some courtesy to my grandma? What she did was unforgivable. It made me realized that she is the type of person who will not stop at anything to get her way and that includes bullying her son and back-stabbing and hurting everyone around her.
Yep, I can’t stand both my in-laws and having to call them ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ is the worst thing I was forced to do in my life. Now, I avoid them like the plague and prayed that we do not ever have to stay with them again. I would rather drink rat poison, scrape my eyeballs out with a blunt fork and slowly pull my fingernails out one by one.
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