The Obviousness of Reward

Yesterday I took the exam for which I have been preparing for quite some time.

About three weeks. If I calculate looking at my calendar, I see that only in the last week it occupied about 15-18 hours of my time. This working week, which is ending right in these hours, was really demanding, but I passed it. I also worked a lot.

Between study and work, I accumulated at least 13 hours a day, for 5 days, that’s about 65 hours. Elon Musk says he works 110 hours a week, but I don’t believe that is possible. Mental health is at stake.

I don’t even believe that for me it makes sense to work less than 50 hours a week. It’s that I like what I do, and so it doesn’t weigh on me to do it: if anything, knowing the method to get to do what I do weighs on me sometimes. The bureaucratic part. I would like to spend all the time reading, thinking, writing and creating. But I know that this is not possible.

I write these lines looking at the Apple Watch which marks 21:33: in an hour or so I will be in a pub with my friends drinking a beer, relaxing and enjoying the moment at the end of the week that marks the conclusion of my tour de force week. Thinking about it, I don’t feel the need to see my friends during periods of work routine. My body and my mind do not need to stabilize.

When instead I pass a difficult, complex week full of activities and commitments, I see the moment when I am with my friends, or more often with my girlfriend, as a reward for what I have done.

If I do less than what I thought I would do, I can’t enjoy those moments, I feel as if I haven’t deserved them.

I believe that this kind of dynamic that happens in my brain is the result of a cultural context in which I was born and raised and which is part of my personal culture that I cannot ignore.

I don’t like this, but on the other hand I can’t do anything about it.

I wish I could enjoy the simplest, happiest and quietest moments of my life without thinking about whether I deserved them or not.

When I was a child I didn’t have the concept of work, but only that of the ‘duty to study’: if you don’t do your homework, you don’t go out to play; if you are good, tonight we go eat pizza. I have always seen beautiful moments at least as a reward for the work I could do.

After all, let’s think about it for a moment: who punishes their children with rewards? Just saying, writing this sentence is a paradox.

But it should be done. thinking about it, today many parents punish their children with rewards, but these rewards are not clear. Particularly lively children, today, are ‘looked after’ by the screen of an iPad, by Peppa Pig, by YouTube. Implicitly, it is as if the parent were saying if you don’t do your homework, I’ll let you do what you want.

Now: I don’t want to point the finger at anyone. The context in which parents behave in this way is the result of what I talked about both in the article on time and devotion to the process and in the one on the courage of waiting. It is a context in which, in a nutshell, there is always little time to do too many things. Or at least so it seems.

And so, using an iPad as educational morphine for one’s children seems the obvious solution. But there is still time to change this course. Just take courage, and wait. Give children the concept of waiting. Of taking time, and waiting for the reward. Of earning the reward.

I dare not think of a world where rewards for work done do not exist, where rewards are ‘dispensed’ regardless of whether the work is done or not. Whether they are deserved or not.

It would be a world where man no longer has an incentive to work because he no longer has a reason to do so. Everything is owed to him.

If a man has everything, why should he strive to have something he already has? This world would be flat, monotonous, and devoid of progress. Because no one would have any reason to progress.

Today, for example, Elon Musk works for a very large reward: the health of the planet. The middle school teacher in the small town in the mountains works to bring home money with which he or she can take a holiday, change air.

[ It was pointed out to me that I had “a superficiality in saying that Elon Musk’s reward is a healthier planet, and that of a teacher the money to go on vacation.” It seemed like “a sweetening of capitalist entrepreneurship and a removing the dignity of vocation from one of the few professions where that vocation has remained.”

Far be it from me to belittle the work for one or the other. I know very well that the role of the teacher is of fundamental importance and those who do it by vocation render immense value to society and the individual. I myself particularly remember professors who have marked, in one way or another, my approach to culture and partly made who I am today (thanks Rosalba, Giulia, Carlo, Mariagrazia, among all). Mine was intended to be an exemplification which, effectively, turned out to be too simplistic. (Thanks Stefano for the report) ]

I work to share my knowledge and popularize, to spark a spark in the head of those who read or listen to me. Everyone has their own reward. If there were no reward, what an empty world would it be?

This episode is perhaps a bit convoluted, perhaps difficult to understand, perhaps I thought it badly. But, like much of what I write, these notes came out like a flooding river while I was writing my daily diary, and I believe that this type of thoughts are the best, because they are spontaneous and rich in associations and continuous relationships, one on top of the other.

I leave you with a question: what is your reward? What makes you wake up in the morning and think that if you did nothing that day, that reward would not arrive?

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