I should change my profile description: half a year ago I quit my work in the IT industry and scheduled five months of complete rest for myself. Good housekeeping was thrown to winds but it proved to be well worth it. The end of the tether had been reached and to have continued would have invited a true disaster. Things did not go as planned, when do they - a sad, sad, griveous loss was unexpectedly experienced in my closest family and the ensuing period did not offer as much mental rest as expected at the onset. At least I was confronted with the essential and eternal instead of any tedious, debilitating work, bleeding from thousands of cuts.
A slow recovery followed and as it happened I luckily and quite out of the blue got an offer about a modest teaching position at a small practical college just outside Helsinki. I accepted and such a change it has been. True, the salary is small and in these sad days teaching is not much respected. One wonders why: teaching the young is such a meaningful and honourable human activity - unlike being an expert in maximizing the "efficiency" of IT support processes in some faceless giant of a corporation which certainly was not meaningful nor very honourable (non dulce et non decorum...). Life is strange - I seem to stay stubbornly true to my principle of drifting, of trying not to be ambitious in the non-essential things (an area I tend to have challenges with), of using my short time in the world for the worthwhile issues: concentrating on the long views, the central questions, being surrounded by friendship and love.
4 comments:
This is so much better suited for you! Come to think of it, there's nothing but winners - you and especially the kids.
It is indeed... It does feel like a weight would have been quite literally lifted from my shoulders. Of courses, the financial situation remains worrying, but at least I am in much better mental shape for dealing with it.
"Virtuous poverty" has it's own enjoyable elements. I know it intimately and learned to live a simple and down-sized life. To own a lot of stuff does seldom bring happiness and contentment, and I have learned this fact during the past five lean years. We tend to work not for ourselves but to our present and still to come aquisitions. As long as one's basic needs are covered, this more simple life can be a liberation. Sounds like an holier-than-thou statement, but seems to be working with me.
That is good to hear. I do wonder about these issues: what are the border lines? I would absolutely not want to be overly concerned about material values, but how to maximize that unconcern? It does not appear self-evident that the answer would be poverty...
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