Hate your job? Try being useful to other people.
The philosopher Alain de Botton suggests that meaningful work comes from the feeling that you've been useful to someone's life - "many of us don't have that feeling at all," he explains.
The size of today's companies ensures that "it’s very hard to think at the end of the day, 'What have I really done that’s helped make a difference?'"
Four Seasons Resort Bali at Sayan suggests a, well, different way to harvest that kind of meaning: be a Balinese rice farmer, and make yourself useful to other peoples' lives in a totally novel way.
You start the morning with a trek through the Ayung river valley, walking past rice terraces and shady trees. Four Seasons' guide will lead you to a private kiosk, or bale, in the middle of the rice terraces, where breakfast will be served.
Now the fun part: you get to plant rice the way the Balinese do it. Rice is a staple in Southeast Asia, and the rice farmer is respected in society like no one else. Planting rice is hard work, but it's meaningful labor - every seedling feeds someone else down the line.
When you're done planting rice, you'll relax through a river stone bathing ritual called batukali. Bathe just like the locals, except the locals don't get herbal blends on their hair and scalp, a river stone scrub, and a Balinese massage with coconut oil and freshly grated ginger paste.
You end the day tasting the fruits of the fields around you - a feast of nasi campur (mixed rice), a dish of red rice topped with a series of different dishes: egg, tofu, the Balinese fried soybean relish known as tempeh, meat and fish. The resort's photographer snaps a memento of the trip, and you trek through the trail back to the Four Seasons Sayan resort, refreshed and (better yet) infused with meaning.
Image © Matthew Hine/Creative Commons