🌿 A Manifesto on Work and Life — Rediscovered in a College Attic

I found some wise fragments again, years after scribbling them in the margins of a college exercise, tucked away in a box in the attic. What once felt like a passing assignment from the Loeb Career Center’s reflection on workview and lifeview now reads like a compass. These notes, rediscovered with the dust of time, have become a meditation on the meaning of work, the nature of life, and the rhythm that binds them both. Hope you enjoy them!

On Work

Work is not just labor, nor simply the means of survival. It is our active engagement with the world. To work is to sustain the lives of those who depend on us, while also contributing to the welfare of the community around us.

Impactful work is not just measured in profit, but in enrichment—when lives are deepened, whether in the immediate moment or across generations. The highest form of work is selfless: the merging of skill, personality, and purpose into action that outlives the self.

Money, though necessary, is not the aim. It is compensation—oxygen, fuel—enough to meet needs so that the mind may focus on something higher. To anchor meaning in money is to miss the essence of work.

Growth is the quiet byproduct. Each experience broadens perspective; each perspective shared becomes nourishment for others. In this way, our growth ripples outward: to colleagues, to families, to communities, to the world.

And beneath it all, fulfillment. Not the fleeting satisfaction of recognition, but the steady knowledge that one’s work aligns with one’s values, and that family and community—roots and branches—are both the source and the recipients of this labor.

On Change and Detachment

We cannot always mould the world to our expectations fully. More often, it moulds us. To live fully is to remain dynamic, able to bend with what comes.

Every twist—joy or sorrow, blessing or burden—shapes us. What feels like a curse today may be revealed tomorrow as the seed of wisdom. To resist this is to harden; to accept it is to grow.

Yet acceptance requires detachment. To cling to temporary pleasures, whether wealth, recognition, or comfort, is to anchor ourselves in shallow waters. True freedom is found in detachment—not withdrawal, but participation without possession, love without clinging, presence without grasping.

On Life

Why are we here?

We are here to give ourselves to the world, as the world has given itself to us. The plants breathe life into us; we, in turn, must return life to others.

We are not merely bodies. We are souls, immortal in essence, wearing these forms like garments to be shed when worn. Death, then, is not an end, but a passage—just as natural, just as sacred, as birth. It is to help make space for the next generation to come.

The purpose of life is to seek ultimate joy. Not joy as fleeting pleasure, but joy born of devotion—of offering ourselves to something greater than ourselves. Sacrifice is not loss but transformation, the refining fire through which the soul discovers its depth.

Time is the silent teacher. It humbles us, reminding us that destiny is not always ours to command. Our task is simpler, and harder: to choose sincerely, to accept consequences with peace, to walk steadily forward. This is karma—not judgment, but the unfolding of what we set in motion.

On the Higher Rhythm

There is a rhythm that underlies all things. Call it God, call it destiny, call it the order of the universe. It is the pattern through which joy and sorrow, justice and injustice, love and strife, are woven into a single tapestry.

To believe in this rhythm is to trust the unseen. It is to remember that what wounds us today may heal us tomorrow. That what we once cursed may, in hindsight, prove the greatest gift.

A Living Document

These reflections are from my college days, and are definitely not final. They are not answers, but markers along a path. Workview and lifeview are not essays to be completed, but living documents, rewritten with every new trial, every unexpected blessing, every quiet moment of reflection.

And yet, one truth endures:

Fulfillment does not come from just wealth or status, nor even from certainty. It comes from alignment—
alignment of who we are with what we do,
alignment of our joy with the well-being of others,
alignment of our brief lives with the timeless values that outlast us.

That is the work worth doing. That is the life worth living.

I’d like to acknowledge that these ideas are an amalgamation of my own thoughts, wisdom from mentors, and many books I’ve read.