JOIN USRecently, I was witnessing quite an interesting sight at a bank. A person, somewhat looking like a hick, was standing ahead of me near the cash counter. He was asked to fill up a form, maybe for some loan he was seeking for. Expressing his inability to fill up, he was vehemently imploring the bank clerk to do it for him. The clerk, who seemed loathe to the idea of being lumbered with extra work, initially tried evading entreaties of the fellow. But later on, yielding to the tenacious badgering of the chap, he began filling up the form in a rather lackadaisical manner. Even as he was doing that job, he was constantly getting distracted, craning his neck around and cocking up his ears to the respective ambient sights and sounds. Precisely at this juncture, he heard his mobile trilling. On seeing that it was a personal call, his face suddenly lit up. With ears flapping, he began chattering with renewed vim and verve.
When he was chatting, not for a moment his focus got deflected. All the languor and lassitude he had exhibited earlier had magically got extinguished, as he began jotting down some sundry details the caller was dishing out. I could see through the counter glass-pane the way the info was neatly jotted down. In fact, they looked as striking as snugly strung strand of pearls - a stark contrast to the unsightly crabbed writing on the form that he had just then filled up.
Apparently, we tend to display that untrammeled zeal, indefatigable gusto and unfettered alacrity in doing such things, that we deem would be ‘harbinger of our happiness’. We exhibit profound care even in small things like buying tickets for ourselves, for a film/holiday jaunt. Once we know the work is for someone else, lo, our interest peters off, our enthusiasm wanes, and our spirit wilts and droops. Even at our workplace, if we know some work would dictate and determine our professional success, (or would herald a plum pay hike), then we go overboard in executing the work with pinpoint precision and perfection. We even get into overdrive, in successfully completing the work on time, howsoever arduous the task could be.
Incidentally, often we find ourselves having grouses against indolent attitude and shoddy working manner of many around us. For instance, we keep carping about the slipshod working ways of the domestic help. We keep getting riled by the real torpidity of the road construction workers, in not expediting their work process. We get nettled by sloppy/slothful attitude of some of our colleagues.
But we need to think of how much we ourselves are sincere in doing others’ work - whether the work is related to our workplace, or related to fellow humans. As the saying goes – “Give the world the best you have, and the world’s best will come back to you,” maybe, “the best you have” also includes the work that you do for others ‘with sincerity’.