THE ESSENCE OF LIFE
Kanakwan Rachatanunthawich
Administrative Officer Level 7, Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT)
For many people, not having life goals or any ambitions is a matter of life and death. Some even turn to onlinecommunities to find answers, and whether it’s okay to just live day by day – as long as you have a job, money, and can leave this world peacefully. Some believe that having a family and children gives life a meaning, so they seek partners to share their life with. But more and more people are discovering that marriage and having children aren’t the ultimate answer to life either.
Setting aside all these various answers, which depend on each person’s circumstances, there’s one thing no one can deny: whatever path you choose, ‘happiness’ must always be included in the equation of your life journey.
It was fortunate for Kanakwan Rachatanunthawich, or Bew, senior official at the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, that when she started her working life, she had the opportunity to discover this equation earlier than others. When she began focusing on life’s true destination, everything suddenly seemed simple. Life doesn’t have to difficult. She has found that the more her expectations and desires decreased, the clearer her happiness became.
We heard you began practicing Vipassana meditation when you first started working. How many years has it been?
I started in 2015, so this year makes it exactly 10 years.
What motivated you to get into this path?
Back then I had just started working and was in a phase of learning about myself – what I liked, what I wanted to do. My second job at Suvarnabhumi Airport, working for Lufthansa, was the job I enjoyed the most. But it involved irregular working hours. It was during that period that I practiced meditation for the first time. I went because I still had questions about what to do after graduating – I didn’t know which direction to go, what life was about. I mean, I knew I had to work, but I had no goals, no life goals. Going there might give me some answers.
Was it that experience that made you value work-life balance?
Actually, I started thinking about it from the moment I began practicing meditation – that I wanted to work in a way where I could divide my time to practice meditation or do volunteer work, and also have time for family. Because otherwise, I’d be someone who could work day and night, work weekends too. If nothing stopped me, I could just sit and work continuously until everything was done. I could handle night shifts, going home late – I was ready to dedicate myself completely.
Usually, people often look for high-paying jobs first, or if the salary is low, at least it must offer a good learning opportunity.
Because I didn’t have a dream job – I just knew what I liked. I was only about 22-23 years old. Even when I was studying, the major I chose (English Language and Literature at Thammasat University) came purely from what I liked. I had no idea what I wanted to do. Then in my junior year, I did an internship at Thai PBS and learned that a journalist’s life really is 9 AM to midnight every day. So I was like, wow, that’s heavy. Another thing was that if you’re still young you might be able to handle it – you have to read the news every day, meaning you have to read news you’re not even interested in, when you might only want to read about topics that interest you.
After graduating, my first job was in the music industry. I was okay with it because I liked working in that field. But even though I didn’t know what career I wanted, I still wanted to do something useful, something that creates value. With every job I tried, I’d try to figure out what each job was for and how it benefited people. Before that, life was already laid out – we had to go through kindergarten, elementary, middle school, university. Now I had to think for myself, so I felt kind of floating, with nothing in my head – completely blank. I thought, okay, I know I have to work, but I had this feeling of “what’s it all for?”
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