Why is work work?
There seems to be universal antipathy to work. Words like shirker and skiver have become confused with basic employment rights enshrined in law. Popular culture has firmly decided that work is not cool and therefore should be avoided by any means, suggesting instead that celebrity is an ultimate goal. Is work so bad? Let’s look at it another way, is work always work?
For mankind to get from Stone Age to Computer Age he had to work. To flourish, work would have to be innate and should on some level increase the satisfaction of the worker. The vestige of that reality is that many of us feel devoid of purpose without work.
If you’re doing something you enjoy it doesn’t quote ‘feel’ like work. The implication is that work must feel like something. What? Is it right to portray work as something we innately dislike, I can’t believe that? Would millennia of mankind have persisted if it was so unfulfilling?
My younger son has grown up on a diet of BMX channels, computer games and hopping between every flavour of instant messaging. Testament to his generation that they take no prisoners, if something comes along they like better, off they go.
Maybe as a result of exposure to certain messages he has shunned traditional education and seeks a life indulging his interests. And despite my protestations that he is work shy he has stuck at it. And suddenly commercial opportunities are appearing and he might make a go of something in an industry loves. So where’s the problem? If through indulging his interests he adds enough value that others are willing to pay, then he can support himself. He is engaged in work but doing something he enjoys. His argument, and I have come to agree with, it is that work doesn’t need to be work is the way this generation sees it.
Work can be enjoyable. If we engage in something we enjoy we say it doesn’t feel like work. And if you manage to support yourself by means of it, it is work and not work the same time, it’s enjoyable. So work is something we could, can and should enjoy. But somehow it feels as if work is portrayed as negative, an attitude, I think, is reinforced by the media. But the media is an industry feeding on celebrity culture, and what it appears to say is you can become deliriously happy by being famous and therefore not need to work. Yet it’s fair to say that B grade celebrities do work pretty hard, but at maintaining and increasing their celebrity.
Therefore, it’s no wonder work has got a bad name.
Just after I was confirmed in Holy Trinity Church on Clapham Common I was pestering the rector with theological questions. Sensing he may get bogged down if he engaged, he later intercepted me at the end of a Sunday service with a bundle of loose photocopied sheets. It was a Buddhist tract, something written in the modern idiom by a believer. I guess it had influenced him when he asked the same questions and it influenced me too. It was an early version of that beautiful Buddhist story about doing something for the sake of doing it, in this case ‘washing up for the sake of washing up’. It explored the idea that washing up is not a chore if you want to do it and that peace and enjoyment can be achieved if you just allow it. And before you ask, I still think it is a chore so I bought a dishwasher.
How was it possible to see washing up as enjoyable? By observing, it by marvelling at it, by thinking through what it would mean to not be able to do it in a country where there is no water, by exploring the way the brush works, by using it is time to listen to a certain radio station or simply as a time to switch brain off and do nothing. What a gift it is to have 5 or 10 minutes in which your brain can have a rest. Or through the magic of our brains we can wash up thoroughly and still think at the same time. Maybe this thinking is prayer?
If you take all the time you spend having fun, and add the time you spend at work, plus the time you spend doing things which are not fun but you are not ‘at’ work, like washing up, that’s pretty much the whole day. If the majority of that time we are able to maintain a level of enjoyment, then work no longer has the negative connotation.
Maybe we should let the media know we don’t want to be fed such a negative images of work. We know you’re doing it because pursuing the celebrity culture makes you wealthier. Instead we want you to also depict work in a positive manner so we can all begin to enjoy it and value it properly.
I enjoy work, I get very depressed when I don’t have work, QED work stops me getting depressed therefore I need work as much as I need air. And that’s why I used to worry when my youngest sons’ generation who seemed to disdain work. Yet if the ambition is to live by means of doing something they enjoy then surely their attitude to work is better than mine. Hurrah for the wise young.
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