The importance of meaning in one's work

I was an employee of a government organisation where, when I joined service, the official policy was "send  geologists to field-work for 180 days".  And for a lot of us who were youngsters at that time we would rather be in the city with easy access to friends and companionship, entertainment, proper housing and living conditions, tasty and edible food prepared by our caring mothers... and the list is quite long.

In the field the things were rather strenuous. In the first place the jeep drivers were a rather recalcitrant lot given to excessive drinking; they would steal petrol and we were accountable for the petrol efficiency of the jeep; some would bring prostitutes to the camp or harass village belles in other ways and put the officers responsible for the camp into grave danger of being upbraided by irate villagers; some would cause the jeep to have a 'mechanical failure' late in the afternoon as you were eager to return to camp after a day in the hot sun and so on. Then there were quite a few times when the tents would get uprooted in fierce winds and it has happened a few times that the night had to be spent soaking in the rain with the bed and clothes getting totally wet. In summers the tents would become extremely hot and, since there was no possibility of having electricity in the tents, there would be no fans. Having been accustomed to all these contraptions of modern living, we would rue the time that we would have to spend in the field . And there was this stipulation - 180 days in the field - this even if you have completed your target. For people like me who were extremely dependent on companionship and friends, the time in the field would be quite lonesome. The worst aspect was a sort of meaninglessness that would creep into your efforts when your ideas were trashed.

My official assignments had taken me to Melkote in Mandya District in 1986-87. I was in a terrible mental condition and since the sickness had continued for over three years by then, it was quite understandable that my bosses could no longer be lax with me and I was required to spend the days in the field and away from Bangalore. Actually I needed medical care but mental disorder is something that cannot easily be empathized with. Everything appears normal so whence the need for consideration? But I do confess that I was treated magnificently well by my bosses. With my equals it was not quite so easy.

The reason why I say this is because my condition was so wretched that I had completely failed to notice that the Melkote hill is actually a southerly low plunging anticline with parts of the town in the axial valley. The A-C joints that seem to cut the rocks as if a knife has sliced through butter. One look at it and it is so obvious even to a blind man that there should be a fold axis (b axis) perpendicular to it meaning that the fold axis would be plunging at a very low angle southerly. Prominent as it is, I noticed it when I re-visited the place sometime early this year (2013) when I made the trip there with my friends.  I shudder to think what all I may have missed during field work when I was sick.  Luckily my colleagues were not generous to affix my name in the crucial part of the report, or rather were generous to omit my name out of it, so that it technically exempts me from responsibility of having missed that geological feature.

Well, the Universal intelligence has His own ways !!

All this seemed to be put in a proper perspective by the TED TALK whose link I have given below and how the absence of meaning for one's efforts can be demoralizing.


Please tune up your speakers and click on the link below to get an understanding about 'efforts and meaning'.

http://embed.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_what_makes_us_feel_good_about_our_work.html






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