ng papers. My problem is that I don't know how to stop, even when it would make sense and be possible to:do so for a time. Working for money has always meant something more to me than a bank balance. I suppose I have felt that at?some level I am my paycheck. Not how much I take home; if quantity were a real issue I wouldn't be in journalism. Just that, like Everest, the money is there. I need to be on a payroll to affirm myself. It doesn't seem like a healthy need; if I were male, of course, it would seem like second nature.

It's an interesting concept, money, sort of the way respiration is an interesting concept. We're not supposed to care about it too much, especially now, when the bad rap on baby boomers is that they've forsworn drugs because they can get high from their cash management accounts. To say it's.central to who and where we are may be verboten; it also happens to be true. If you haven't got any, you're on the streets or on welfare. If you've got a whole lot, you're on the best-seller list and you don' t have to play Monopoly anymore because in real life the entire boardwalk bears your name.

Most of us fall somewhere in the middle. Most of us need to work to pay the rent, make the mortgage payments. I.ots of us convince ourselves that we need to work 60-hour weeks to do that, but that's of ten because we've let the size of our toys get. out of control.

We've got a gender gap on the issue, too. A man who is not interested in earning money is a ne'er-do-well or a freeloader; a man who is supremely successful is a captain of industry. But society is still more comfortable with women who see earning power in terms of selfprotection, not self-promotion.

While it has been fashionable during my lifetime for professional women, plagued by guilt over conflicts between their roles as mothers and as workers, to say that they work because it fulfills them, that's only haif the story for me. I also like it because it pays. That makes me feel guilty. I should have better priorites. The new saw about not mimicking male behavior turns out to be an old saw in disguise: we should not be prey to the baser impulses.

7. Work Brings Social and Personal Esteem

For these men, work is seen, not so much as a necessary evil, but as an opportunity to use one's skills in a way that gains money and esteem and is quite pleasant in itself. Work is a way of life, a mental challenge, an emotional involvement. The rat race is described as being exciting, and, when high status is combined with high financial rewards, it brings both social and personal esteem, Work can also give scope for male assertiveness;being in a position of command and control is a satisfaction on which several men proudly commented.

8. Work for High Financial Rewards

"I've got happier as I've got richer in direct proportion . For me money buys happiness."

For some men the business of making money through work is gratifying and exciting in itself. Their lives are geared towards this and they have chosen their jobs principally for their high financial rewards. For them money is important, not just for what it will buy, but as a badge of success: money and status are inextricably linked. Sometimes the whole family is involved in the quest to "get on", sometimes wife and children have to take second place, but they all have a common aim. They are the competitors, the self-made men, many of them with a well-conceived plan of sel

上一页  [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] 下一页