Soul Survival

Seems like all my life I've heard people talk about how living the wrong way - especially in terms of what you do to make money - can kill your soul.

I've had some time to ponder this. My tentative conclusion: souls are not as fragile as some would have you believe.

Does spending most of your waking hours most days of the week doing work that often seems pointless and brings little or no beauty or joy into the world actually damage your essential spirit, the way eating crappy food or breathing polluted air damage your body?

Answer (again, tentative): damage, perhaps. But destroy? No, for the same basic reason humans can survive toxic physical environments - adaptation. In the case of the soul - or mind, or spirit; not picky about the tag in this case - most of us find ways to discover some brightness or color or meaning in our days, whether through connecting with the people we work with, or perhaps just through momentary flights of imagination, anticipation, or memory.

And as I've said before, we can all use a hand with this now and then. Look around.