Your Purpose

I was deep into researching theoretical approaches to interdimensional travel when Mr. Tanaka's voice cut through my concentration with an intensity that made me look up immediately.

"No."

"No what?" I asked, noting that he was staring at our client documentation with an expression I'd never seen before—something between fury and profound determination.

"No, we're not giving up. No, we're not abandoning our clients. And absolutely no, we're not letting corruption and bureaucratic obstruction win just because fighting back is difficult and painful."

I set down my research on magical transportation methods and gave him my full attention. "Mr. Tanaka, what brought this on?"

He stood up, walked to our wall of client testimonials and success stories, and stood there for a moment, reading through the evidence of all the lives we'd improved and problems we'd solved.

"Yamamoto," he said, his voice carrying a note of something that sounded like revelation, "do you remember what my life was like before we came here?"

"Corporate drone, unfulfilled, constantly stressed about other people's poorly organized financial problems?"

"Lonely," he said simply. "Profoundly, systematically lonely. I went to work every day in a job that felt meaningless, dealing with people who didn't respect my expertise, solving problems that no one cared about, and going home every night to an empty apartment where I watched television and wondered if this was all there was ever going to be."

I had to admit, that description matched my own memories of his demeanor during our corporate days.

"But here," he continued, gesturing around our office, "for the first time in my adult life, I've been doing work that actually matters. Work that helps people. Work that uses my skills to solve real problems that make a genuine difference in people's lives."

He pulled out one of Megan's progress reports, showing how our optimization had increased her annual income by over 600 coins while reducing her stress about financial management.

"This client was considering giving up on advanced magic entirely because she couldn't make the economics work. Now she's one of the most successful Arch-wizards in the region, and she's helping other mages optimize their careers using methods we taught her."

He moved to another file. "This fighter was spending more on equipment replacement than he was earning from quests. Now he's financially stable enough to take on higher-level challenges and is considering starting his own adventuring company."

"Mr. Tanaka..."

"I'm not finished." He pulled out more files, his voice becoming more passionate with each example. "This cleric was working two jobs to afford the spell components needed for her healing ministry. This merchant was losing money on basic inventory management mistakes. This craftsman was undercharging for his work because he didn't understand cost analysis."

I watched him review file after file, and I could see that each one represented not just a business success, but a personal validation of his professional worth.

"All of these people," he said, "are living better lives because we applied systematic analysis and professional competence to problems that everyone else just accepted as unsolvable. And you want to abandon them so we can go back to pushing papers for a corporation that considers us disposable?"

"I want to stop watching them suffer because they worked with us," I said. "I want to stop feeling responsible for making their lives worse by attracting the attention of corrupt officials."

"Their lives aren't worse because they worked with us," Mr. Tanaka said with absolute conviction. "Their lives are worse because institutional corruption is being used to punish competence and systematic improvement. And if we give up now, we're not protecting them—we're confirming that corruption is stronger than everything we've accomplished."

He sat down across from me, his expression intense but not angry.

"Yamamoto, I've been thinking about this for weeks, and I've realized something important. This isn't just about our business or our clients or even our success in this world."

"What is it about?"

"It's about whether the work we do matters more than the obstacles we face while doing it." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "Back in our corporate job, the obstacles were bigger than the work. Bureaucratic inefficiency, meaningless procedures, managers who didn't understand what we did or why it mattered. The system was designed to frustrate competence and reward compliance."

"And here?"

"Here, the work matters more than the obstacles. Yes, we're facing corruption and institutional obstruction. But we're facing it because we've accomplished something genuinely valuable that threatens people whose power depends on maintaining inefficiency and chaos."

I looked around our office, trying to see it through his eyes rather than through my own exhaustion and frustration.

"You're saying that being attacked for doing good work is better than being ignored for doing meaningless work?"

"I'm saying that finding meaningful work worth fighting for is the most important professional achievement of my entire life," he said with quiet intensity. "And I'm not willing to give that up just because it's difficult to protect."

"Even if it means continued stress, ongoing conflict, and no guarantee that we'll ultimately succeed?"

"Especially then." He pulled out what appeared to be a letter he'd been working on. "Yamamoto, I've been documenting not just the financial impact of our forced suspension, but the personal impact. Do you know what our clients have been telling me?"

"What?"

"That working with us was the first time they felt like someone actually understood their problems and cared about solving them rather than just profiting from them. That our optimization services didn't just improve their finances—they improved their confidence in their own professional capabilities."

He showed me excerpts from client communications that I hadn't seen before.

"'Earthly Solutions didn't just help me manage my money better—they helped me understand that my work has real value and that I deserve to be paid fairly for it.' That's from our dwarf fighter client."

"'Before working with your firm, I thought I was bad at business. Now I realize I just didn't have access to the right tools and knowledge.' That's from Megan."

"'Your optimization strategies didn't just save me money—they gave me the confidence to pursue higher-level challenges because I knew I could manage the financial risks properly.' That's from our cleric client."

I read through the excerpts, realizing that our impact had been broader and deeper than I'd understood.

"They're not just financially better off," Mr. Tanaka continued. "They're professionally more confident, personally more secure, and economically more independent. And all of that is being systematically destroyed not because we failed, but because we succeeded too well."

"So what are you proposing?"

"I'm proposing that we stop researching interdimensional travel and start preparing for the fight of our professional lives." His expression was determined in a way I'd never seen before. "I'm proposing that we use every tool at our disposal—legal expertise, client loyalty, community support, and systematic documentation—to prove that competence and integrity are stronger than corruption and bureaucratic obstruction."

"And if we lose?"

"Then we lose fighting for something that actually matters instead of giving up because the fight is harder than we expected." He looked around our office one more time. "Yamamoto, this is the first time in my adult life that I've found work that feels genuinely important. I'm not walking away from that just because protecting it requires courage and persistence."

I studied his expression, noting the way his entire demeanor had changed. The anxious, constantly worried corporate employee had been replaced by someone who had found genuine purpose and was willing to fight to protect it.

"Mr. Tanaka," I said slowly, "you're right. This is worth fighting for."

"Even if it means continued stress and ongoing conflict?"

"Especially if it means continued stress and ongoing conflict," I said, feeling my own determination return. "Because if we don't fight this, no one else will ever be able to build something similar."

"So we're abandoning the research on interdimensional travel?"

"We're abandoning the idea that our problems can be solved by running away from them," I corrected. "We're going to solve them by being better at our jobs than the people trying to stop us."

As we began planning our comprehensive response to the systematic bureaucratic obstruction we were facing, I realized that Mr. Tanaka had taught me something important about the difference between meaningful work and comfortable work.

Comfortable work doesn't require you to fight for it. Meaningful work does.

And apparently, meaningful work was worth fighting for.