I still remember Miss Carag, my kindergarten teacher, who took me under her wing on my first day of school. I was one of the many kids who cried when our mothers left us in school. Maybe because I was the noisiest crier, she gave me special attention the whole year round. I knew I was the teacher’s pet because I was the keeper of the toy cabinet’s key.
In Grade 1, my teacher tutored me after school so I could catch up with the rest of the class. I knew she was happy when I started receiving honor certificates starting in Grade 2.
Teaching is one of those professions that directly touch lives. Our teachers' acts influence our lives even beyond school. Until now I am thankful for my teachers who unselfishly reached out and held a once frightful child's hand.
Doctors, nurses, caregivers, priests, and nuns - all these professionals touch lives on a daily basis. Maids and drivers too play an important role in our lives. These people can easily claim their profession to be their vocation.
Maybe ten years of programming does that to you but lately, I have been asking myself how I, as a programmer, have made a difference in other people's lives.
Putting in fixes ASAP for my user in Taiwan has certainly made me a better programmer. But I wonder if twenty years down the road, they would remember me as a person who made their lives better.
Downloading reports every godforsaken week for my user in Indonesia has made me a more patient and understanding person. But I wonder if it has the same effect on my user.
Putting in long hours at work to implement a new banking system for a multinational bank in Hungary has made me a more flexible and smart worker. But I wonder what profound effect it will have on the life of even one Hungarian.
Unlike firefighters, policemen, and mailmen who work in the frontlines, my job, a programmer's job, is done in the background.
While bank tellers deal with irate depositors, we deal with the computer system that the bank tellers use. While we also deal with people daily, our primary responsibility is to keep the system up and running 24x7. To this end we sit in front of our computer terminals day in and day out.
I could not count anymore the times that I said I didn't want to work with computers or anything computer-related. In this I am not alone. I have lots of colleagues who moan that they're sick and tired of facing a computer screen the whole day. These are also the same colleagues who immediately boot up their computers upon arriving home to surf the internet and play computer games.
I have also lost count of the number of times I daydreamed of retiring to a farm out in the boondocks. I know lots of colleagues who dream of the day they can finally quit IT and go into some other pursuit that is more liberating to the spirit.
I am now on my 6th programming job in 10 years of programming. Each time I changed jobs, some perceptive colleague has always told me, "I hope this time you find what you are looking for". I admit I am in search of finding meaning in what I do for a living.
Many times I have envied Sisyphus. He is the one in mythology whose task it is to roll a large rock to the top of a hill. When the rock reaches the top, it automatically rolls to the bottom. According to Victor Frankl, the author of MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING, Sisyphus found meaning to his life because he abandoned himself to the task at hand. He did not think his work of repeatedly pushing the rock up the hill absurd. He simply did his task. As NIKE puts it, "Just do it".
If only finding meaning in one's work were as simple as that.
Frankl himself suggests in his other works that finding meaning is not so simple. He says that, "meaning must be found and cannot be given". And also, "meaning is something to discover rather than to invent". He also maintains that, "ultimately, meanings are unique to each individual".
And so I offer you no answers or clear-cut ending as my own search for meaning continues…
Now back to work.
Comments are welcome at paul_vergelmb@yahoo.com
