Something strange happens when you start being an adult.
When you're in school you are define yourself by your hobbies, by the music, sports, films and other things you like, and what you and your friends do when you're hanging out.
This carries on into university, when you still define yourself by these things, but add onto that what you're studying. How you're trying to understand the world in the field you're specialising in becomes a part of your character that defines who you are.
But as soon as people enter the workforce, a shift seems to happen, where the things that previously defined them fade away, and become subsumed in a list of job titles that they take on as they progress on their career path. What they do becomes the very definition of who they are. Their CV becomes the expression of their personality and the meaning of their lives.
I have never understood why this should be.
If work is a means to an end, and a way to meet our needs and wants, then why should we do any more of it than is necessary? Instead work seems to have become an almost religious duty, done as a kind of penance, or a form of self sacrifice for the greater good of society. But of course we know that most of the work being done is definitely not in the best interests of society, especially if we're talking about work that fuels the engine of consumerism. That is extremely destructive to society, to the environment, to other living creatures, and to our happiness as a whole.
So who's benefit is it being done for? I think that's quite obvious. Glorifying work really only benefits the owners of capital. Those who own businesses, industry, and control credit and the means of production. They are the one's who don't work, but who other people work for, and who other people make rich.
So I propose a different model. Instead of seeing yourself as your CV, why don't you see yourself as your own business? I see so many people with fantastic CVs, great careers, and a very impressive work history, but I wonder what they would look like if we analysed them as businesses?
What does their Balance Sheet look like? What about their Income Statement? And how about their Statement of Cash Flow? What are their assets, and what are their liabilities? What is their debt position? Is their business growing or is it failing?
Your job is you working for money, your business is money working for you. Spending your life building a career and an impressive CV is simply you working for somebody else's benefit, not your own.
Instead we should spend our time accumulating income producing assets, in whatever form, and building a strong balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow in the form of passive income, so we don't need to work very much, if at all, and can go back to living life as being who we are, not just what we do.
Maybe then we'll begin to understand that we don't need a lot of the material things that that everyone is working so hard to produce, but we can be happy with a lot less.
And the planet will be a lot happier too.
