Ahmad Al Charif

“Work is a means to an end”*, a colleague of mine once said to me, as i handed her a cup of cold water in my ongoing attempts to calm her down, and genuinely try to understand her situation. You see she was miserable, had been so for several years. That day was different though, so very different. But allow me to elaborate.

A few minutes earlier, I had been watching as this upper-management lady, had what I can only describe as the biggest nervous breakdown I have ever seen to date. Pens went flying around, dramatically across the conference room table, harsh words were yelled out at the top of lung capacity, tears shed in agony, and the conference call machine beaten to a dead pulp by her black heels, all the while hysterical laughs intermittently interrupted all of the previous actions.

And for what, exactly?

Apparently this lady was so overwhelmed with the workload, so tired of all the daily and constant hassles of her job, that something in her snapped, resulting in a horrifying nightmare for me, as I watched this poor soul suffer in pain, wreaking chaos and havoc to all in-animate objects at her disposal, followed by a catatonic state for a good solid 10 minutes, while life around her moved on as if nothing had happened at all, as if it was a normal thing. Few colleagues actually cracked some jokes about the event afterwards, and how they all saw it coming. “It is inevitable”, one person remarked. You don’t get to where you are, if you do not toughen up, and get used to the stress, and the fast pace of a demanding market. “No pain, No gain”.

Who gained what, in that room exactly? Is beyond my comprehension.

A few days later, I discover that many people actually enjoyed the show. That they had been pushing for it for a while now, with “fingers crossed” that today would be the day. And while I know the lady very well, well enough to know that she has made life hell for many people, I still don’t get it.

Is this really what life had become all about, in the 21st century? Is happiness, no longer a factor at all to consider when choosing a career? Could it be a reality, that the world as we know it, revolves around money, and that anything we do with our lives that is not a means to that end, is a complete and total waste of time? It seems to be the theme, in most corporates I work with at least. Always about the numbers, never about the people.

I for one, reject the idea in its entirety. Money, should be the means. Never the end.

Do you know, what your “end” is? Or are you just another nervous breakdown, waiting to happen?

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* A means to an end is an idiom. It is used when something you are doing (work) is not as important to you as what you hope to achieve by doing it (in this case, probably money). This idiom has been gaining in popularity, Whoever says this usually does not really enjoy their job in itself, it is a job they are just doing to earn some money.