We’ve suffered through more than a few bad years of a worsening economy. While things have leveled off a bit in the past two years, it’s hardly “good times” for most Americans (and much of the rest of the world is actually even worse off, especially many of our friends in European nations like Greece, Spain and Ireland).
And while there’s a lot of bleakness on the horizon, there’s also some rays of hope.
I was watching 60 Minutes last night and a repeat story came on from March about the turn-around of Chrysler at the hands of super-CEO Sergio Marchionne. Here’s a guy that really challenges your current beliefs of what it means to be a workaholic. When he’s not working at Chrysler, according to the story, he turns around and flies back to Turin, Italy to take care of Fiat.
He saved 54,000 Chrysler jobs (with the help of our government) and has said he’s since added more than 9,000 new ones.
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Hi,
Surely, you must be able to see the dysfunction in this whole post. As an established degreed mental health professional, you must be able to put your Freud hat on, analyses this post, and recognize the deeper indications? Saying you or somebody is “driven” or “passionate” about something is the positive spin to saying, “They are avoiding thinking about something else, they concentrate so hard on their work, because if they stop they will have to think about that thing that haunts them.” This is the problem with our western culture. So many people are “driven” by forces thy don’t understand. The loack of care and nurturing as a small child in a country where two parents work, split, fight, or are emotionally absent, where kids still in their formative years are ushered off to be taught by the “Lord Of The Flies” environment of public school how to be bullies, be bullied find and promote peer groups, behave like animals. So much emotional assaulting goes on in our first 18 to 20 years of life. Then by the time we exit into the community as adults, we are just hardened, soldiers against anxiety. We have all the tools. Including working so hard about the most important aspects of life.
I tell you, I am treading water. I Like to call it sailing, but whatever. It is my “passion”. The things that helps me run from my pain. People ask all the time, “Why don’t you apply for this position?” “Why are you hear when you obviously can make a lot more money doing this stuff on your own?” Because here, I put my 40 hours in, and then I leave it all behind and enjoy life.
One thing you didn’t note in all of that is where is Sergio’s family? Is he simply living to sell cars. As the sun goes down on his last day of his life, what will be the answer to the question, “what was the point of all this. What did I do it for?”
I have been obsedrving for quite some time now that the difference in Western philosophies and Eastern and Middle Eastern is such that we will never understand each other. In the US we live with a borderline personality mental perspective. We don’t have any connection or faith in our past like our parents and elders. We have no expectation of the future. We don’t believe we have impact beyond our own life. We live only for today, for the moment. While in the East they view themselves as a piece of a greater mechanism, the human race. They feel they owe their elders and are obligated to carry on not only their genetics, but their philosophy and morality. Now the negative result of that can be seen in acts such as “honor killings”, “harakiri”, “Kamikaze”, or “suicide bombers”. It is hard for either of us to understand the other.
My advice to all the world is, “Slow down man. Take time to look at yourself from outside yourself. Ask who you are now, and who you will be in 100 years.” How you answer that question is a litmus test for how you mental health truly is. Peace Doc.