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I have the following sentence: [仕事]{しごと}で[気]{き}を[遣]{つか}うことが[多]{おお}い. Which
directly translates to： at work you use your 気 often. Some other translations
of ki wo tsukau include, paying attention to others, caring about something,
to attend to, to fuss about, to take into consideration.

My question is what is the nuance of this き. Is it a good thing or is it a bad
thing. Imagine you have to agree or disagree with the statement. What is the
suggested meaning implied by these responses.

I've read in other works where 気を遣う is not really a good thing, like it is
taking away at the core of your energy and you couldn't maintain some
situation, essentially because that situation is using your き. However, in the
translations above it also seems like the statement is saying, you often care
about your work. The significance here is that ones response of agreeing or
disagreeing to the sentence, has almost exact opposite meanings depending on
the interpretation of the sentence. I feel the key to understanding the
sentence is in the nuance...

Cheers.

Finally, I would be happy if someone could edit/add tags so I can better
understand what this question should be tagged as, thanks.
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2013-10-05T18:31:26.237
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2013-10-05T20:14:09.003
2013-10-05T19:34:28.190
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nuances
The implied meaning of 気（き）
気を使う is an idiom, so take the whole thing as a unit. It means something along
the lines of 'make accommodations for someone', i.e. to go out of your way to
avoid saying/doing things that might negatively affect someone (especially
emotionally). Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing depends on your
perspective - it can be a pain to have to accommodate other people all the
time, but that doesn't mean it's not a nice thing to do.

As a note, in most (if not all) cases in modern Japanese, 気 is used as part of
idioms rather than as a word on its own. Don't think of 気 as a separate word
meaning 'energy', think instead of 気を使う as a single verbal unit (albeit one
that can't take an object, since it technically already has one). These days
気を使う means as much 'use ki/energy' as 'shoot someone an email' means 'fire an
email out of a cannon at someone'.
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answer