Making and Breaking

There’s a popular myth that says “work is useful and fulfilling”.

That is undoubtedly true in many sectors, but in some, such as my own, well… I wonder.

Sure, if I think about it, I can find a certain usefulness, but as far as I can judge, the usefulness of any work carried out in the private sector is just not comparable with that of vocational activities (doctors, teachers, fundraisers, etc.).

Let me give you an example. It will be a coded example, for confidentiality purposes (not that I am a UN ambassador or an undercover spy or anything, but you know how it is…).

I am a member of an international committee that meets up twice a year in different (nice) locations around Europe. This much is true, but let’s say that the purpose of my committee is to…. er… produce a tourist guide.

Every four years, a new issue of the guide must be produced. The latest one is set to hit the press this spring, so I am just doing the proof-read.

As I slog through the dozens and dozens of pages in the guide, it strikes me that the total number of changes made amounts to… a few hundred words.

Then I start to make little calculations in my head: 4 years, 10 people, 8 week-long meetings, 80 hotel rooms, 160 flights, hundreds of taxis, thousands of emails… All for the sake of a couple of pages of text that will be of interest to a handful of people.

Naturally, my calculations make me feel a little panicky, and I get overwhelmed with a sense of the pointlessness of life, etc., etc., so I force myself to stop, calm down, detach.

But there’s this niggling sense of ridicule bothering me on some level. I am reminded of one of my favourite lines from “Howards End” by E.M. Forster: the outer life of telegrams and anger.

All this hustle and bustle and self-importance and yet, is it really anything more than playgroup for adults?

Anyway, back to the proof-reading. Soon I’ll spot a typing error, and this will help me erase the image of the huge carbon footprint stamped on these few pages…