QUALITY OF LIFE
Philosophers have through all ages been occupied with the immense questions and seemingly unsolvable problems related to the quality of human life. As life for most people has consisted of a professional and a private life, both have been subject to consideration. For half a century grand thinkers have been reflecting on the meaning of life and how to improve it and quite surprisingly, a sign of our time is that these problems are starting to soften up on the thinkers (1-3). It is only natural, that we take these general solutions and apply them in relation to our worklife, and for that purpose we have constructed the word working-life quality or the quality of working life .
There is no guarantee that we will grow very old. We may die tomorrow. Life is far too short for meaningless work. It is important to understand that our body cannot endure the strain of doing things we consider meaningless. We must be alive on the job; we must be eager and keen and go full speed ahead!
You will not become more alive from doing work that you consider routine, boring, monotonous, and exhausting. This is not to say that all physical work— washing, cleaning up, or sewing—is bad work. If you like it and you have good colleagues and if you consider it useful, then it might be the right job for you. But, work that you do not consider good for you is not worth having. Do not take it for the sake of money. The world has grown too rich for that. To those people who insist on arguing that many people still have to work for their daily bread, we can only say that their attitude may be wrong. Of course, it is necessary to work to maintain a good standard of living—but is that standard necessary? Happiness does not depend on a car or a mobile telephone and electric toothbrush—nor the good claret and sirloin. Basically, happiness comes from your own well-being, your surroundings, and from doing what you really like to do. If you can achieve such a state of well-being, there is no reason to be unhappy about a life without material goods. In that case, you are far better off than the average person is. Indeed—and this comes as something of a surprise—according to the previously mentioned study on quality of life, people with jobs they do not really like generally feel worse about life than those who are unemployed. The same research also showed that it is not unusual to be happy without a job. According to the survey, 55% of the jobless persons stated that they were happy or very happy, compared with 66% of persons with jobs, although those on social benefits were on average less happy.
It is your own responsibility to get on with your life if you are in a job that you do not like. Nobody will do the work for you. Your working life is your responsibility. You are the only person, who really knows what is good for you, and you are the only one who can change things.
Our greatest enemy is resignation, indolence, and laziness. Apathy flowing sluggishly through the veins and listlessness causing heavy eyelids all day long result in an almost dead person, who seemingly will not take the initiative in his or her own life. A person without dreams of life is a person who is only half-alive. To find out what to do with our working life is the great opportunity to do something about it.