Invisible Work
“Perhaps creating something is nothing but an act of profound remembrance.”-Rainer Maria Rilke
There is this strange assumption that if one is not physically doing the work than no work is being done at all. But are we conflating creation with work? Or have we also time bounded creation by “completion” and “finished product”? If creation is anything like Nature than it must never cease its motion and its everchanging face upon us. To cease change and hold it in a static position is to eradicate a part of existence in our tiny incompetent hands.
I. Defining Work
I will attempt to propose the contrary to the conventional idea of work which is, there is never a time when we are not working. Every experience is a gathering of sense data or to use more appealing technological language, “mining”. Now a question that arises, are we aware that we are working? Whether you are sipping coffee, feeding your kids, watching Netflix or in a state of euphoric daydreaming, you are indeed working, but towards what?
II. Working to Remember
Remembering is a key task to answering towards this “what”. It is due to our lack of remembering that all our work can be in vain. It is not enough to bound your work to a physical time space. Why not ? Because all the other accumulation of experiences have gone to the way side and you have decided whether consciously or unconsciously, its own unimportance yet what is the measure to which we determine its value? If there is anything that we need to “work” on, is attempting to remember and finding all the invisible links that our lives poured in and out of us.
III. Quality of Work
Could it be the case that watching Netflix is low quality work? Sure. It could also be high quality work depending on what you are watching. Though, I would tread carefully even on this notion, for doing the work is contingent on the quality of participation towards remembering. Quality of work can easily be confused with the creative direction one is intending. Watching anime can be “perceived” as not high quality work towards the act of woodworking, but it does not mean it is lacking high quality work towards story telling and character development. There is no hard line here, the line is transient and dynamic.
IV. Remembering is Creation
If the individual does not confine themselves to a stringent mode of experience one can enhance their quality of woodworking in the context of creativity. Simply, by remembering the aesthetic appearance of the anime characters and the various architectures displayed throughout the story. Why is this connection vital and necessary to understanding work? Because in work, every iota of experience gathers to a point of intensity that demands its own creation. The real question is, do we bother to remember all the work that is ready on hand?
V. Refusing the Traditional Work Scheme
Confining time and space to where work can only be achieved, defaces and disfigures its boundless quality. In reality, work, creation and memory blend into one due to its dynamic and lively character. Any static concepts to these are contrary to life itself. Everything is a movement, there is never a time where you are not working and creating. It is only when we choose to plot down time like a point on a graph, where one can argue that no work was done and that a physical product has failed to appear. Free your confining mode of experience from a physical space time and you will see that work lays ripe demanding its own harvesting through our remembrance. This is the only urgent task that demands our incessant and utter attention.