The other day, a quiet voice broke through the noise of the day’s tasks. It didn’t arrive with the clamor of a corporate directive. It surfaced the way real things do, slowly, in a gap between one meeting and the next. At 66, you look at the horizon differently. Time has changed its denomination. And yet there I was. Still tethered to the daily machinery of business goals and outcomes. Still trying to earn my badge while simultaneously exiting the gate.
The nudge asked four questions: Why do you work? Are you working because you have to? Do you work to help yourself? How does your work help others? And then the one that made me set down my coffee: Which question are you?
I remember a Hallmark film I’d stumbled upon, Stranded in Paradise. The film centers on a recently fired HR executive who travels to Puerto Rico to salvage her career at a convention, only to be marooned by a hurricane and faces an unexpected reckoning. The real question, buried beneath the romance and palm trees, was disarmingly simple: Are you happy? Or are you employed just to be employed?