How Your Work Shapes You

The weakness of sheep, and how similar that is to our weakness, has been described. But there's another important lesson to learn, and that is the fact that we are affected by the environment we work in — our work leaves a permanent influence on our personality. Shepherds of sheep are different than shepherds of camels and shepherds of cows. Shepherds of sheep are different than cowboys, and cowboys are different than shepherds of camels. Why? Because they are dealing with a different animal. Sheep tend to be very compassionate, very merciful, and they are weak, so the shepherd learns to become merciful and kind with them, because they are very fragile animals — he can't be too harsh with sheep. So the prophets of Allah learn how to be compassionate with their followers. But when it comes to camels, for example, camels tend to be very arrogant animals, and you can't be soft with a camel, otherwise it will take advantage of you — with the camel you have to meet that arrogance with strength, you meet the pride with pride, and that makes the shepherds of camels rough, and it makes them very tough, and they could be rude. And that is something that is learned because of the environment that they're living in. And the qualities or characteristics of cows could be described too, drawing out their influence on their shepherds as well.

What you do affects you. Teachers tend to have a different personality than doctors, doctors have a different personality than engineers, engineers have a different personality than skilled workers, farmers have different personalities than so-and-so — your work affects your personality. So, after being a doctor for a few years, you lose your ability to write, you start scribbling. Being a teacher for a very long time makes a person such a fatherly figure, always giving advice, and they might do this with people who are their peers, but because they are used to dealing with children, they start dealing with others in a similar way. People who stay in the academic field for a very long time tend to be very scholarly, even when they're outside the academic world — the way they speak, the sophistication of their talk, the words that they pick would be different than somebody who has less education. Mechanics, since they are always dealing with machines, would tend to have a personality that is different than a farmer who is always dealing with plants and is close to nature.

Actually, the influence is both ways: your personality will affect your profession, and your profession will affect you, because people with a certain interest would tend to choose a profession that suits their personality, but then that profession would push them further in those traits, and they would end up developing those traits further. People who stay in the political world for a very long time tend to be more deceptive than others, and it also depends on the political situation that you're working in, and because that's your daily business, that's how you have to be from morning to night. Take, for example, an actor — somebody who's always acting, putting on a different face, imitating a different personality — that teaches them something, doesn't it? It affects their personality. So our work affects us. Therefore, as a Muslim, you need to be careful about what type of work you do. This isn't to say that we shouldn't spread out into different fields, but keep in mind that you need to choose work that would suit your personality, and also keep in mind that your work will affect you and influence you. Every type of work out there has something good in it — try to take advantage of that good, and try to eliminate the bad of the field. As mentioned, for example, being deceptive and lying in politics — that doesn't mean that we shouldn't go into that field, because as Muslims we need to change that image of politics.

With the Companions (may Allah be pleased with them), almost every Companion had that involvement. When you look at a certain time after the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) passed away, you would rarely find a Companion who didn't assume office in one place or another, whether it was a governorship, or the mayorship of a town, or leading an army. But the political environment they lived in was absolutely different than what we have today — it was an environment of honesty and straightforwardness, and being accountable and responsible to the people, and serving them. So our work does affect and influence us. So, enough said about shepherds of sheep.