Work without Objective

There are moments when we are not sure about the path we have taken and all the efforts invested and the future envisioned becomes questionable. Such a situation is more frequent when you have the willingness to risk for a challenging path whose destination is unsubstantial. This has been the way of men from time immemorial. But the recent objective oriented management theories have stripped us of our capability to be natural. Recently, my cousin Arun completed his engineering and sent his resume to be floated across the industry. He has written **** Who Knows**** against Objective. I called him to find the reason and he said that he has written the truth. How many of us are courageous enough to float a resume like this?

When I first prepared my resume, I had to remove the Objective for the difficulty it caused in defining it. If at all, I am able to define one, it is not really going to be in the orbit of the profession I would be applying for. My short term objective would be to complete whatever I am doing now and the long term objective would be to have sound sleep tonight. I don’t call this a myopic attitude and I have been successful by being here and now without having to stick on to a life long goal or vision. Building an objective castle in the air and envisioning a farsighted future has always left me in the company of disappointment and despondency. Initially, I was also fascinated by the fantasies of the objective, vision and goal theories. After gaining some experience in life, I was delivered from this disillusionment by the following verses from Bhagwat Gita and it has remained as my favorite quote since then.

“You have right in respect of action alone;
Not is respect of its fruits.
Let not the fruit of action be your motive;
And, let there be not attachment to inaction either.”

Even if we read through the entire text of Gita, the essence of the books is the above-mentioned verse. Like, love for love sake, you have to work for work sake. I had to meditate over this for a couple of years to comprehend the intricacy of its meaning and the essence of its message. When our actions are driven by the objective, we work more like a slave entangled in the hope of achieving it. Freedom is lost and all our actions and thoughts are imbued in the objective that might be a distant future. We fail to explore new avenues and take up innovative responsibilities as they may not be in sync with our objective – there is always a limitation. We are blind to the present and the beatitude of life that is surrounding us because of our indulgence to the fruit that might be borne. More often, we are more focused on the objective that, we fail to even act now to achieve the same.

Just by walking step by step, we can cover ten thousand miles easily. But, if we start thinking from the very beginning about crossing ten thousand miles, our legs may start trembling; our heart may start wavering. The only way is to walk step by step. No body can even walk two steps at the same time. Why should we think of crossing ten thousand miles now? Just do what is required now and the future will take you to a destination that might be better than what you had envisioned.