I lied. Nothing is for free, even at work. Especially at non-profit work.
The down-payment for social reform is usually based on something tangible. Something real. As real as blood and tears.
The bigger the effort to stick through, is the more concrete a reward is needed, right?
It’s just that, after a while of getting cash, certificates and cups, compensation seem to take more abstract forms. Immaterial. Transcendental. Personalized.
Hence, the tendency to indulge in stories.
Look here, mate, for thirteen years, the Quran was revealed in the ancient form of “chicken soup”. The general theme in Makkiyyah surahs held stories about previous prophets, job descriptions, and their hardships and rewards. Nearly all the chapters in the Old Testament and Bhagavad Gita are like that.
That is why, in all of their beginnings, Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha, King and Mandela indulged in a certain number of years on meditative seclusion. To listen to stories that...
- ...described the terms of a job that might cost their lives.
- ...might answer: IS IT WORTH IT?
- ...provided a sense of continuity; someone in the past had done it too.
- ...clarified exactly whom is their audience, and what message they’re going to send, and why – for God’s sake - should they bother.
All I’m saying is that, great men, leaders, prophets, oracles, whatever…merely were humans who listened to enough stories from the past.
Enough stories to retell a better version of the future.
Now, isn’t that something?
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