Work

Posted by Mark Chapman on August 23rd, 2010 at 7:54 pm

Herb “Padre” Agee

By Herb “Padre” Agee

Engle­wood United Methodist Church

I’m sit­ting at home right now with the TV on. I came home for lunch and turned it on while I ate the three hot wings left over from last night. I needed more, by the way, because I love the Pub­lix hot and spicy wings from the deli.

Any­way, CSI was on the Spike chan­nel. Boy, is it ever easy to get hooked on that show. When one is over, they don’t even go to com­mer­cial, they move imme­di­ately into the next show to hook you for another hour, then another, and then another. I’m not say­ing I did that when I should have been work­ing. But guess what? All of a sud­den you real­ize you’ve watched sev­eral hours of CSI and been exposed to dozens of com­mer­cials, which, of course, is why they made the show in the first place. Or didn’t you know that?

Did you think they did those shows for your enter­tain­ment? Oh, maybe some writer was enjoy­ing their cre­ativ­ity while devel­op­ing a sto­ry­line, but ulti­mately they were try­ing to write some­thing that would sell; some­thing an adver­tiser would think was good enough to hold your atten­tion long enough for you to see a commercial.

That com­mer­cial, cre­ative in its own right, has the sole pur­pose of putting a prod­uct in your mind. It might be to inform you about the prod­uct; it might be to com­pare it to a com­pet­i­tive prod­uct; or it might be only to leave the prod­uct name on your mind. I’ve seen com­mer­cials that were great, usu­ally funny, but when it was over, I didn’t know what the prod­uct was or what it did, but I knew the name. And I knew that I wanted one, real bad! Bingo —  that’s what it’s all about. It’s that com­mer­cial, or rather the prod­uct and cor­po­ra­tion behind it, that was the rea­son for it all. TV shows are basi­cally made only to hold your atten­tion between com­mer­cials. Only PBS does shows nobody would pay to see, because they’re sup­ported by the gov­ern­ment. I’m fine with that. We need some­thing more edu­ca­tional than vampires.

How sad! How sad that every­thing we do seems to be linked to what we can be paid for doing it, rather than doing some­thing we love. Because then the ques­tion always becomes, “Can I get paid more for doing it for some­one else or some­where else?” or “Will it sell bet­ter in another market? “

Inter­est­ing, huh? There are a few peo­ple who do jobs they love even though they could make more money doing some­thing else. But most of us make our deci­sions about our work based solely on what it will pay us. Preach­ers — not so much. Once we are used to a cer­tain stan­dard of liv­ing and are in debt, we are stuck even though we wish we could change to some­thing we enjoy.

Cre­ative peo­ple are good at doing what they love. Think of the artists or musi­cians you know who live fru­gal finan­cial lives so they can do what they love. I love the guys who once hoped they would make it big in a band some­day, but now they are 50 years old and still play­ing every night in a local bar because they love the music. They can’t have a “reg­u­lar” job because they don’t get to bed until three or four in the morning.

This econ­omy has changed some people’s under­stand­ing of work and what’s impor­tant and valu­able. They were doing some­thing they hated, but were mak­ing a lot of money. Then they lost their job and real­ized that if you get rid of the boat, the RV, the jet skis, the four-wheelers, the third car, the house on the lake (every­thing but the Harley), you could live on a lot less each month. Some of the moms or dads have started stay­ing home with the kids since they didn’t have a job and couldn’t afford day­care. Their own lives and the life of their fam­ily have changed for the bet­ter even though they hated how it came about.

I hope you get to do some­thing you love and make enough to live on. My wife always says, “Enough is as good as a feast.”

I recently watched a video about a fam­ily of six who live in a reg­u­lar sub­ur­ban neigh­bor­hood in Cal­i­for­nia. Their front yard is beau­ti­ful, but every­thing is edi­ble. Their back yard is all raised beds and they farm. They have chick­ens and a goat and they sell their extra pro­duce and eggs to neigh­bors and local restau­rants. They live, in Pasadena, Calif., on $30,000 a year. Nobody works, except on the farm. They live on a fifth of an acre. If you want to see the video, let me know and I’ll send you the link.

So, when you’re watch­ing a TV show you’re hooked on, remem­ber, they’re just try­ing to sell you some­thing. Prob­a­bly some­thing you don’t really need, even though you want one — really, really want one.

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