Big fat salary, or stable job?

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question: Sir, What is more, important for a fresher, big fat salary, or a stable job?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Neither. What’s your name?

Listener (L): Acharya Ji, Taranjay.

AP: Taranjay is asking “What is more important for a fresher, a good salary or a stable job?” Neither. A good salary implies accumulation, A stable job implies fear — “What if this job goes away? What will happen to me?”

Work is life. Out of the fourteen or fifteen hours a day, when you would not be sleeping, when you would not be doing your daily tasks, you would be spending the majority of your time working. So, if I am awake, fifteen sixteen hours a day, out of that twelve hours or fourteen hours are going to be spent in work-related activities. I am going to spend seventy percent to eighty percent of my life working. Do you see this?

Work is life itself. Work is the most important, most dominant overwhelming component of your life, it will take away all your time. Work is life.

And if you do not love your work, then actually you will hate life. Because work is life. You cannot approach work using these considerations, salary, stability, these are very small, very trivial considerations.

Have you come across a word called ‘Calling’?

Calling means the work that calls out to you. A work that beckons you, that says “come, it’s so loving, it is so attractive, you want to do it” You want to do it, even if you are not paid anything. You say High salary, I am saying “Choose the work that you would do even without getting any salary”.

Imagine what kind of work that would be which you are ready to do even without being paid? Now, if that work can be your life, then life is beautiful.

If that work can be your life, then life is beautiful.

And only such work deserves to be your life. Only such work deserves to be taken up. You must find out your calling.

You must find out what really beckons you.

What do you mean by stability? When you say, “I want stable work.” what do you mean by that?