The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work - Alain De Botton [81]
To see ourselves as the centre of the universe and the present time as the summit of history, to view our upcoming meetings as being of overwhelming significance, to neglect the lessons of cemeteries, to read only sparingly, to feel the pressure of deadlines, to snap at colleagues, to make our way through conference agendas marked ‘11:00 a.m. to 11:15 a.m.: coffee break’, to behave heedlessly and greedily and then to combust in battle – maybe all of this, in the end, is working wisdom. It is paying death too much respect to prepare for it with sage prescriptions. Let it surprise us while we are shipping wood pulp across the Baltic Sea, removing the heads of tuna, developing a nauseating variety of biscuit, advising a client on a change of career, firing a satellite with which to beguile a generation of Japanese schoolgirls, painting an oak tree in a field, laying an electricity line, doing the accounts, inventing a deodorant dispenser or making an extended-strength coiled tube for an airliner. Let death find us as we are building up our matchstick protests against its waves.
If we could witness the eventual fate of every one of our projects, we would have no choice but to succumb to immediate paralysis. Would anyone who watched the departure of Xerxes’ army on its way to conquer the Greeks, or Taj Chan Ahk giving orders for the construction of the golden temples of Cancuén, or the British colonial administrators inaugurating the Indian postal system, have had it in their hearts to fill their passionate actors in on the eventual fate of their efforts?
Our work will at least have distracted us, it will have provided a perfect bubble in which to invest our hopes for perfection, it will have focused our immeasurable anxieties on a few relatively small-scale and achievable goals, it will have given us a sense of mastery, it will have made us respectably tired, it will have put food on the table. It will have kept us out of greater trouble.
Picture Acknowledgements
This project was designed as much as a photo reportage as an essay. I had the privilege of working from the outset with the photographer Richard Baker (www.bakerpictures.com), to whom I owe a great debt, both for his eye and for his unflagging good humour in moments of crisis. A fuller selection of images can be seen at: www.alaindebotton.com/work
Additional picture credits: Chapter Three: Edward Hopper, New York Movie, © Museum of Modern Art, New York. Chapter Six: Images of Stephen Taylor © Ken Adlard, New Moon Photography, Norfolk; aerial photograph of the tree, Stephen Taylor (www.stephentaylorpaintings.com), courtesy Essex and Suffolk Gliding Club; photograph of gallery interior, Vertigo, 62 Great Eastern Street, London, courtesy of the artist.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the many institutions and individuals who allowed me access to their places of work and spent many hours discussing their occupations with me. Particular thanks are due to Martin Garside, Glenys Dawson, Fred Stroyan, Lucy Pelham Burn, Mariyam Seena, Sarah Mahir, Yasir Waheed, Mamduh W., Naleem Mohamed, Salma Ahmed, Ibrahim Rayan, Franco Bonacina, Jose Rossi, Brigitte Kolmsee, Jason Orton, Iain McAulay. Some names have been altered in the text to protect identities. I would also like to thank Tom Weldon, Helen Fraser, John Makinson, Dorothy Straight, Joana Niemeyer, Dan Frank, Nicole Aragi, Simon Prosser, Caroline Dawnay and Charlotte de Botton.
About the Author
Alain de Botton is the author of three books of fiction and five previous books of nonfiction, including How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Consolations of Philosophy, and The Art of Travel. He was born in Switzerland and now lives in England.
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