Life as Work-In Progress

The word ‘immersion’ has taken whole new dimensions for me – espousing the role of a ‘researcher in the making’ is by no means an easy feat. Every single fiber of your being is in a way recast via an intellectual experience that leaves little room for activities that you took for granted in what now seems like past life. As the highly stimulating requirements of the course grow more and more encompassing I realize what most of us often forget – there are really no ‘full stops’ in the script, there are only commas and semi-colons that create a text which is a continual work in progress.

This in no way indicates any negativity to the most often than not process of molding and re-molding of oneself. In fact the process in its fundamental spirit is beyond all evaluations that we may attach to it. My recent introduction to the works of one of the greatest philosophers, Immanuel Kant, re-affirmed this belief of the basic nature of incessant improvement. While talking of ‘duties’ in the context of ‘morality’ Kant writes of a man who decides to ignore his natural talents and chooses to instead live a life of idleness and amusement. He cites this as a violation of fundamental duty of an individual leading to immorality. In spite of the esoteric sound to this, the underlying thought points in the direction of continual improvement being ‘basic’ to human nature.

If this is true, our efforts take on a whole new meaning. Working toward the end of a project or term or deadline ceases to be the aim while taking on the re-defined role of being a punctuation mark in the broader paradigm of creating and re-creating a better version of yourself. Progress then is not measured against tangible goals, but instead becomes a series of milestones that guide us through the way which we have adopted ‘just because’.

This understanding is evident when you hear individuals committed to a healthy life repeatedly saying how exercising and eating right is a ‘lifestyle’ and not solely attaining a weight-loss goal, in individuals who blur all lines between ‘work’ and ‘no work’ by creating what Ricardo Semler would term as a ‘seven day weekend’, in individuals who ostensibly have their plates full with projects but still are always excited and willing to take on more and deliver because they have understood that the only goal there is is of being in a continual mode of work-in-progress.

This also brings the freedom of balance that does not wait for one task to end for the other to begin – where you don’t start doing something you like only when something you ‘ought to do’ reaches an end. The freedom generates from a realization that ‘end’ is not the state to wish for, where you don’t wait for your coursework to end to write your blog, because neither of the two will and should end.

I remember reading a sign in a coffee shop that said ‘work is what I do between coffee-breaks’. Imagine the beauty in life if the distinction between work and coffee-break disappears. Or better still the beauty of connecting to our natural self because everything translates into a never-ending coffee-break!