The world outside is a network of interpersonal relationships fraught with conflict, misunderstanding and emotion. Other people are unpredictable. Even we ourselves are unpredictable. The human condition consists of a grabbag of vain dreams, impure motives and quiet desperation, and seems seldom to move in any direction but a circle. In fact, clear direction or purpose seems to be notably absent from the universe as a whole.
Progress is a comforting theory with little empirical support.
But in front of the computer screen, I no longer wonder about the meaning of life. I generate daily, monthly and quarterly reports, detailing profit and loss, assets and liabilities, cash inflows and outflows. And they all have a bottom line. The vague existential anxiety that religious people call the hope of salvation has no place in the world of accounts. If the bottom line is not what it should be, we'll raise prices, lower costs or eliminate waste that crept in under past gentler and less efficient management.