Many of us spend most of our time
at work. If we do not enjoy our work, if we feel overwhelmed by it, it will
surely damage us. The constant pressure of negative emotions causes inescapable
damage to our arteries and other delicate tissues. It also slows down the
body’s capacity to repair this damage.
To work at something you love, to
be ‘self-actualized’ in Maslow’s terms, is to protect yourself against dying
young. As Khalil Gibran wrote, ‘What is it to work with love?... It is to weave
the cloth from the strings of your heart, as though your beloved were to wear
it.’
Politics can make the blood boil
with suppressed rage and unexpressed anxiety. ‘Fast tracking,’ being a
corporate star, will extract the inevitable price of damage to arteries if you
are not ‘mindful’, if you are not aware of the impact of everything you do on
your system.
Reisman speaks of the ‘lonely
crowd’. Loneliness, a sense of exclusion, is a poison that can cause illness as
easily as a virus or bacteria. Loneliness is the most lethal of modern
diseases. For example, newly widowed women have a higher rate of breast cancer
than married or single women.
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