My Hubby’s stepmom was a career minded Lady - put everything she had into her work.
I remember the week she retired she seemed a little sad and said - 40 years of hard work, and within a couple of weeks ill be forgotten and it’ll be like I was never there!”
When it’s all said and done - we humans need love in our lives, and that is what we take with us when we leave this earth.
Exactly. If you do a truly exceptional job at a large corporation, you move up through the ranks, then when you retire, you might get a conference room named after you.....then in a couple years, the next up-and-comer (while killing a few minutes until the next meeting) looks at the dusty plaque on the conference room wall and says, "Hmmmmm....WBill. Wonder who that guy was?" and then moves on.
That is, assuming that the company is around at all. My Dad worked for a number of places throughout his career - some of them *very* large - and he's fond of mentioning that, with one exception, they're all gone. Gone out of business, or bought out and dissolved. 40-odd years of hard work, just disappeared.
Truly, it put my priorities in order. I'm planning on my grandkids telling THEIR grandkids...."Let me tell you about eating Grandpa WBill's pancakes while we make some from his recipe. They're GREAT! Here, the batter needs to look like this...Chocolate chips this time? OK, just not too many....."
And so on. Important stuff. Not work.