URSABLOG: Filling In The Gaps

Many years ago, I was invited by a Japanese friend of mine, the commercial attaché to the Japanese embassy here in Greece, to a business seminar. It turned out to be a very thought-provoking event for me, and the memory of the themes discussed remain with me still. One speaker was from Nintendo, and from that I adopted the maxim “luck is the product of preparation and opportunity”, i.e. that to be lucky you have to be prepared to take advantage of opportunity when it arises. This means keeping working through periods of difficulty or even failure so that you when something does come up you are ready. This is not easy, especially because these periods are usually accompanied by doubts – of others and our own self-doubt – but nonetheless absolutely necessary. Even when we are successful we have to keep being prepared to take advantage of the next opportunities; being successful once does not guarantee future success. This means we have to work hard.

Economists from Princeton, Vanderbilt and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis have recently estimated just how much hard work contributes to lifetime earnings. While the answer depends on context, they arrived at an average figure of 20%, for the US workforce at least. It is not an insignificant amount, but is not, obviously, the only factor in play. Where you were born and grew up, who your family happened to know – and of course sheer luck – play a role. But these are not by any means the only determining factors, obviously, for success in our lives. These may in part explain why you are where you are, but work, not rest, is more important in getting ahead. Luck does not just fall out of the trees all the time, and even if it did, you would still have to be prepared to catch as much of it as possible.

The most persuasive reason for me for working harder is that the more you invest in your human capital the more productive you are. I do not just mean being a wage-slave for your employer. Work for me includes a lot of other things, which others may see as leisure. I believe that learning new stuff – languages, hobbies, cooking, literature, science, even travelling – will make you more productive as your mind remains receptive to more diverse inputs, and preserves and nurtures creativity.

Keeping your body fit and healthy is hard work too, but exercising with other people can again give a different perspective on life rather than the single-minded desire to make your body perfect for the beach. All of this is helpful in keeping mind and body fit for purpose in the long run but of course the main focus is usually the work of your life, your career, because this is what will pay and sustain you. Whether it brings you a better life is another matter of course, but this is what keeps hard-working psychologists everywhere in business.

If these habits of hard work are instilled in you at an early age – by education or family, ideally both – then all the better. If you are going to work hard, you should start doing so relatively early in your life, so as to reap the human capital benefits for future years. But there is no reason why you should not adopt new ideas and ways of doing things later in life either. Doing things the way you have always done them in the hope of different results is, if not madness, but not particularly a productive course of action.

There is – and I may sound old-fashioned now – some value in working hard for the sake of it. Laziness, indolence and inaction are insults rather than words of approbation. “He was  great man: he was idle to the end” is not something you are likely to hear in any eulogy. And although sometimes we have to keep working hard even though it seems folly in the face of the facts, it is action – rather than the opposite – that carries us through difficult times.

Rest is important of course, but I am uncomfortable with the idea that rest should be the central focus of our lives. It is necessary of course, but I am a great believer in the saying “a change is as good as a rest.” I speak for myself of course, but I am uncomfortable not ‘doing’ anything. By the way, reading is doing something too.

But before I sound like someone who is bragging about his own success because it was all down to hard work, there are dangers in this way of living. Stress, burnout, alienation from friends and family, separation and divorce, loneliness, compulsive and anti-social behaviour, even addictions can be unwelcome companions to working hard. And working hard, by definition, is not easy. The phrase ‘working soft’ does not exist, at least not in the English language.

It helps of course if you have a reason to work hard, and those around you understand the reasons for it. Supporting a family, or other dependants, is of course the most normal reason for hard work, and those looking for life partners, whether or not they want to – or can – have children, will look for some sign of potential growth, stability and security in who they chose. Other relationships based on fun, travel, excitement, even erotic exploration and fulfilment, will tend to be as fleeting as the experiences they yearn for. This is not a bad thing necessarily, just a different thing.

But we are all looking for a thing, something to work for, a reason for living. Das Ding (German for “the thing”), a concept developed by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, was conceived as an abstract notion trying to explain one of the defining characteristics of the human condition. He saw Das Ding as the vacuum experienced by all humans which they try and fill with differing relationships, objects and experiences. Unfortunately, according to Lacan, all our efforts to fill this gap are insufficient: The Thing is not enough, because the The Thing does not exist. But it doesn’t stop us trying to look for it.

According to Lacan, we can be temporarily convinced by our own psyche into believing that a new object, person or experience will satisfy our needs in a stable and enduring manner when in fact – because of its nature – it will be lost and never be found again. In fact, it’s worse than that: you didn’t know you were looking for it, but then you found it. But you don’t find The Thing itself, only its pleasurable associations. Human life then unravels into a series of detours in the quest for the lost object or the absolute Other of the individual. Looking for the One. Looking for the silver bullet or the magic key that will fix everything for the better. In vain, because it does not exist.

But the mind is a resourceful thing. How often when we ask ourselves “What do I really want?” do we fail to give a satisfactory answer? Most times, I suspect, not because we don’t know, but because it does not exist. But this does not stop us trying. This is not a curse, but a blessing. It leads us to create, and to keep on creating things, experiences, relationships in the quest to fill that gap. This sublimation – the process of the creation ex nihilo (creating out of nothing) – can create things of beauty in an attempt to fill the emptiness of Das Ding.

Human creation therefore – of works of art, of buildings, of companies and enterprises, of products, of ideas, the list is endless – are things attempting to fill emptiness, whether physical, emotional or intellectual. Lacan remarked that religion and science are based around emptiness. In religion, it is in the response to the idea that “there must be more than this”, and in science, especially in physics, the quest to find out what really does exist in that apparent emptiness.

Luck, as a concept, is mostly – by its very nature – unpredictable and unexplainable, and the best we can do is fill the gap with theories of probability, or simply prepare ourselves to take advantage of the opportunities that may arise. It is – again, by its very nature – never going to be a sure thing, something to rely on. Most of our lives are spent – consciously, subconsciously or unconsciously – preparing for things that may or may not happen. For the pessimist this can lead to a defeatist attitude, as there seems to be no point in trying to do anything anyway. For the optimist – and I count myself amongst their number – just because The Thing that I (and everybody else) is looking for doesn’t exist shouldn’t stop me working hard to create something that will fill that gap, that emptiness.

The greatest buildings were built around emptiness, the most beautiful paintings filled the blank space of an empty canvass. Companies were created – ships were designed and built – to fill and take advantage of gaps in the market. Humans were behind all of this: creating something out of nothing is who we are.

In acts of creation, whether fantastical or mundane, a lot of the time the idea seems to come out of nowhere. “Inspired!” we say, when we are trying to explain the sublime. But, as far as Thomas Edison was concerned: “98% of genius is hard work.. [and] As for genius being inspired, inspiration is in most cases another word for perspiration.”

Looking back on a life where – like most people I suspect – I can regret both decisions taken and opportunities not taken, I do not regret the work I have done, when I have done it. I do regret the times however, when I was doing nothing, either by choice or accident. The inputs and outputs of knowledge, understanding and experience gained have been worthwhile, and have occasionally led to flashes of inspiration, and even less frequently, creation. I may not find – ever – what I am looking for, and as far as Lacan was concerned, the quest is paradoxically both pointless and necessary. But the things gained – and sometimes created – along the way, have been worth it.

Simon Ward