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Assessing life's
"quality" through measures of material gain is insufficient. It is a
one-sided bias that can result in more harm than health—both for
individuals and for organizations. A life of abundant
quality is balanced and whole. It includes hard-nosed material
production and also imaginative spiritual ideals. It consists of
solitary intellectual pursuits and also interdependent
relationships in community. These seeming opposites are woven together as
a life of rich quality. "We have learned how to make a living, but not a life." Quality, by
definition, is not measured quantitatively. Yet that has been our cultural
bent—the income level, the size of the house, the sticker price of the
car, the prestige of the job—these have been the typical measures of the
"quality" of our lives. These dashboard measures of material gain can help
to gauge a few of the aspects of life's quality, but we need to monitor
the dashboard gauges of other forms of quality as
well. We must also
consider: Who has benefited from the life we have lived? How have we left
the world better than we found it? What poetry has moved our soul this
week? What books have altered our understanding of the world? To how many
people can we honestly say, "I love you?" How much money have we given
away to people or causes that we believe in? An unbalanced, overly
materialistic life engenders neurosis—whether for the individual, the
organization or the culture. It has been too truly said that: "We have
taller buildings but shorter tempers, fancier houses but broken homes,
more conveniences but less time, more medicine but less wellness, steep
profits and shallow relationships...We have learned how to make a living,
but not a life." The workplace is not
just for work. It is a place of community where people may continue to
pursue one of the preeminent purposes of life—to develop a life of
abundant quality. In that pursuit,
through the individuals who work in them, organizations become more vital
and resilient. | ||||
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