A familiar sight

While at lunch today, I saw a familiar sight. The person whose life is all about work. He might as well have been in his office because the lunch he had and the person he was with didn't matter at all. He was working the phone, had his laptop up and running and was intensely focused on the task at hand. I believe it is important to work hard, but when life becomes about the work, I think you have missed the more important things. This isn't a new observation for me, I've lived in the environment for years. People who sell out all for the sake of making money, having the power or whatever it is that makes them feel important in their job. I've heard all of the excuses for abandoning their families, having nothing to talk about besides their work, feeling that if they make enough money then they can quit (which they never seem to have quite enough to actually do that), and the list goes on and on. I been around or in that environment for close to 20 years and still don't understand it any more today than when I first entered it. The task is never the most important thing in my perspective, but in business the person is just another disposable piece of the picture. Why do people crave that so much? I don't get it and I'm okay with that. Maybe it is the fact that I reading John Grisham's latest book "The Associate" that it stuck out in mind today. It reminds me of what it was like starting out in public accounting - the long hours, the cut throat mentality, the idea that enough money someday would make it worthwhile. I am glad that chapter of my life is long over and have no desire to reenter that world. Just something that caught my attention today at lunch.