No one is neutral about the topic of work. Everyone has an opinion and the reason is simple: Work, food and sex are the most commonly shared behavioral traits of adult life.
While the latter two are subject to esthetic taste and availability, and, therefore constitute a discretionary choice, work, for 95 percent of us, is an entirely non-discretionary matter. As adults there is nothing more that preoccupies our lives. From the approximate ages of 21 to 70, we will spend our lives working. We will not sleep as much, spend time with our families as much, eat as much or recreate and rest as much as we work. Whether we love our work or hate it, succeed in it or fail, achieve fame or infamy through it, like Sisyphus we are all condemned to push and chase that thing we call our job, our career, our work–all of our days. “Even those of us who desperately don’t want to work,” said Ogden Nash, “must work in order to earn enough money so that they won’t have to work anymore.”
In its most benign sense work can be defined as any activity we need or want to do in order to achieve the basic requirements of life and to maintain a certain lifestyle.
Of course, there are other more loaded definitions of work. The philosopher/curmudgeon Bertrand Russell defined it this way: “Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill-paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.”
The paradox of work is that while many of us wind up hating it, or are simply worn down and exhausted by it, most of us start off eagerly seeking it out. We want to work.
Work in this society is seen both as a means and an end in itself. As a means, work is the vehicle by which we can achieve status, stuff and success. As an end, work allows us to conform to one of our most cherished myths, the “Protestant ethic.” This ethic holds that work is good. And that all work, any work demonstrates integrity, responsibility and the fulfillment of duty. The social imperative here is clear–not to work means your mother thinks you’re a bum.
In the long run work can prove to be a boon or a burden, creative or crippling, a means to personal happiness or a prescription for despair. But no matter where a person winds up on this spectrum one thing is clear, work is one of the primary means by which adults find their identity and form their character.
Simply put, where we work, how we work, what we do at work and the general ethos and culture of the workplace indelibly marks us for life.
. The lessons we learn in our work and at work become the metaphors we apply to life and others, and the means by which we digest the world.
Perhaps the easiest way to prove the point that we are affected, labeled and formed by the work we do is to consider its converse. Imagine the now all-too common scenario of a 48-year-old bread-winner who has been “re-engineered”, “downsized” or “five-plus-fived” out of a job. With the anchor of adulthood ripped away, with few prospects in sight, but with bills to be paid, mortgages to be met and children to be educated, the “terminatee” is often reduced to adolescent torpor. This person is forced to ask the questions: Who am I now? What have I accomplished? What can I do? Who will I become? Because work looms so large in our lives most of us don’t reflect on it importance and significance. For most of us, work is well–work, something we have to do to maintain our lives and pay the bills. I believe, however, that work is not just a part of our existence that can be easily separated from the rest of our lives.
Work is not simply about the trading of labor for dollars. Perhaps because we live in a society that markets and hawks the fruits of our labor and not the labor itself, we have forgotten or never really appreciated the fact that the business of work is not simply to produce goods, but also to help produce people.
At the level of mental health, work is a basic requirement of adult life. As adults we need work in the same way that children need to play in order to fulfill themselves as persons. Unfortunately this thesis applies even to those of us who spend our lives laboring at “bad jobs.” Jobs that Studs Terkel refers to as “too small for our spirit” and “not big enough” for us as people. Jobs that are devoid of prestige. Jobs that are physically exhausting or mindlessly repetitive. Jobs that are demeaning, degrading and trivial in nature. Even these kinds of jobsprovide us with a handle on reality, an access to services and goods and a badge of identity.
To paraphrase the words of Winston Churchill — first we choose and shape our work, then it shapes us –sometimes forever.
