Old harbor of Zierikzee, Netherlands.
ZIERIKZEE, The Netherlands – In Zeeland, the southwestern-most, lowest-lying (mostly below sea level), and most sparsely populated province in The Netherlands (which, on the other hand, is the world’s fifth most densely populated country), lies the small city of Zierikzee (Pronounced: Zee-rick-zay).
It received city rights in 1248 and – in 1250 – erected the original (and still standing) part of the Stadhuis (City Hall) that served as such for 747 years. With numerous expansions over the centuries, the building was repurposed in 1997 into Het Zierikzee Stadhuismuseum, one of the most interesting museums I’ve ever visited. You see, by this point, Zierikzee had been subsumed into a larger municipality and didn’t need its own Stadhuis. Yet the city retains its distinct identity and history.
Zierikzee was and is a medieval city in every sense. Buildings in those old European towns (not just Holland, but everywhere) bear the dates of construction on their façades, so take a walk through the streets and – one after another – you’ll see 1610, 1593, 1557, and – if you look hard enough – 1250. It’s the rare building that is new. They don’t tear down buildings over there; they preserve them. And with that, they preserve the most important thing any country or town has: its history.
But Zierikzee is also a modern city, with new hi-tech enterprises; wi-fi blanketing every cobblestone street and brick house; communications, advertising and PR businesses, fine restaurants (trust me) and shops whose shingles hang outside the buildings they now occupy, buildings that housed countless families or businesses for half a millennium and more.
Over the course of a couple hundred years, The Dutch East India Company (VOC) was, by a long shot, the most dominant, active, and prosperous player in mercantile trade in the world, operating from ports all over The Netherlands, sailing more ships, employing more people, and hauling more cargo than all other European countries combined. One of those ports was Zierikzee.
Of the 4,785 ships sent out by the VOC, 635 sank. One of them, De Roompot, went down in 1853, only 20 kilometers from Zierikzee after its 12,000 nautical mile return journey from Burma to pick up hundreds of tons of rice, with a quick stop in Portugal to pick up a large order of Madeira. The irony is that De Roompot’s home port was Zierikzee, and it traveled 24,000 miles, round trip, in nine months, only to fall short of home by 20 kilometers – twelve miles!
Where history lives perspective takes shape.
So now let’s step inside Zierikzee’s Stadhuismuseum. To the left of the immediately engaging lobby is the original part, 772 years old and counting. To the right is a newer wing where some very important work is going on. When a museum manager detected our interest in this story, he invited us (my wife and me and the couple with whom we traveled) into the new wing, right smack into the expansive room where two women – obviously high-level experts – were working on identifying, cataloging, and preserving all sorts of objects from the ship, including several bottles of Madeira that were still sealed and intact. (Oh, the fantasy!)
The ship was raised in 1998, but work didn’t begin for a few years. Since then, though, these two – and other – historians, curators, preservers, and researchers have been working continuously on this one project. I am certain, based on our conversations with them, this will be their life’s work. It was, by the way, exceptionally cool that they readily stopped their work to talk with us, demonstrate what they did and how they did it, show us a few objects (including a tantalizing bottle of Madeira), discuss the history, and so on.
Does your work matter?
In perspective, this is only one small ship (only 22 men on board) in one small museum in one small town in one small country, etc. In fact, I’ll bet this little museum doesn’t get as many visitors in a year as the Rijksmusem (Amsterdam) gets in a day. But their work is work that matters.
And that brings me to t point. “A life’s work is an important thing,” wrote my old friend Chris Brune in the foreword for my book. He then cited Dom Joseph Warrilow who gives us a vision of what work can be: “Work you are thankful for. Work you enjoy. Work that uplifts you. Work that celebrates existence.”
What a wonderful thought! In our frantic pursuit of career goals, financial conquests, competitive edges, strategic moves, and so on (none of which I advise you to ignore), it would do us a world of good to assess the meaning of the work we do.
I’ve learned over many years that the most important thing you can do with your life is something that will outlast you. And in order to achieve that, you must, as Chris continued, “be self-referential in creating the career you want and managing it through to successful retirement and a fulfilling life, independent of the quixotic largesse of the business world.”
It’s quite possible this column will not resonate with some who have read it.
But for those with whom it does, I’m glad I wrote.
