One of the best things about being an adult is you do not have to do what someone wants you to do. Unfortunately there are a few areas of our lives that we have to take care of, work being one of them. For most of us work is something that we will spend most of our lives doing. I used to think that when people retired, and then went back into the work force, it was because they could not make ends meet and had to go back to work for extra income.
Not being shy about striking up conversations with strangers, I found out many people do not go back to work for money. Although money helps, many people have gone back to work for other reasons. The number one reason of people I have spoken to went back to work for is to fill a social void that suddenly appears when they no longer had their workplace to go to. Not having work to do is the same as staying home sick from school. It is fun for a day or two but loses its luster quickly.
We seldom realize just how important work is in our life. We also do not pay attention to how important those people we work with are in our day to day life. Someone that has a forty hour work week, spends over thirty hours a week with people they may not have picked to be around us if there was an option. Thirty plus hours a week sharing space with people we did not choose to be around, but are surrounded by due to a partially random decision. Once at our work, we form relationships and occasionally strong bonds with those people around us.
We also have our disagreements and occasional arguments in the workplace, but they are rarely as serious as some situations generated in our personal life. I find the biggest reason is we are more accepting of people, their thinking and habits while we are at work. While at work, people’s ages, personalities, and cultural thinking are very diverse. At home family members share [more or less] our same interests, and compliment our likes and dislikes. At work however, we learned to learn to put aside our differences to get along.
We learned to widen our scope of what is acceptable, or at least not objectionable where we work. At work and home we see the best and worst in everyone. We learn their habits, hear about their problems, and at times share their suffering. At work we are encouraged to be nice to the oddly strange person we would never talk anywhere else. At home we generally not accepting of anything that we do not think or practice ourselves. We do not allow a large degree of freedom of expression, or dissension in most family environments. We may chuckle at something said that we do not agree with, but we make it known that too much difference is not tolerated.
In our personal relationships, it is in our best interest to remember our workplace and how we conduct ourselves while at work. Getting along well with people who are different than us and occasionally complete strangers should be a part of our personal life too. Keeping the same level of open-mindedness away from work as we have at work, will improve our own life and the lives of those around us. Take a few minutes today to plan how to bring part of your work home with you – the good part that is, getting long with others.
