Work as personal development / Working wisely – part I

  ”Do what you love, love what you do, and deliver more than you promise!” - Harvey Mackay

Why do you work?

Is it because you love what you do, or simply because you have certain desires, like a nice house, a fancy car, relaxing vacations, good food, etc., and that in order to fulfill these desires you need money, and thus you exchange your hours, days, months, years for your labor?

I am hoping that it is a combination of these two things, that you love what you do, and that what you do is enabling you to live the life you wish without making any compromises.

However, looking at statistics this hope doesn’t seem to be very supported. According to the Gallup ”State of the Global Workplace” report employees can be divided into three categories depending on their involvement: The ”engaged” workers, the ”not engaged” workers, and the ”actively disengaged” workers. The engaged workers are the ones who drive the business forward, the not engaged workers show up, do what they are required to do but nothing more and simply don’t care about your business, whereas the actively unengaged workers are actively at war with the company they work for trying to destroy it from within. 

In another recent survey it was discovered that people, in general, work 2 hours and 53 minutes per day, the rest of the time they spend talking with their colleagues about non-work related issues, eating, ”cyberloafing”, or even looking for another job. That doesn’t seem like the recipe for a successful company.

Taking these aspects into consideration one could easily get the idea that a good manager should get rid of these employees, at least the un-engaged ones, and especially the actively disengaged ones, and replace all employees with the engaged workers. However, is that possible? Are there so many actively engaged workers around? I doubt it. 

The purpose of this article is to help people develop a wise approach to working so it becomes something loveable, or at least likable, and thus solve some of the problems that arise from having a wrong attitude towards work, including stress. In this way, everybody becomes engaged in their work, because they see a purpose in it.

Work, as it is perceived in the Western part of the world, is, more or less, a necessity. If you don’t have a work you are not a good citizen, and this seems, in many cases, to lead to severe personal problems for the people who do not have a work. However, the fact that the work is a ”necessary evil” doesn’t make it something that we love. Paradoxically, we need to have a job in order to feel good, yet that doesn’t mean that we love what we do.

Other traditions have different approaches to work, and it is my impression, and experience, that we can help ourselves, as well as our work life, if we look at, and learn from, what others have discovered regarding the attitude towards work.

In his masterpiece ”The Prophet” Khalil Gibran writes:

”Then a ploughman said, Speak to us of Work.

And he answered, saying:

You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.

For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinity.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.

Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.

But I say to you that when you work you fulfil part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to keep you when that dream was born, 

And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,

And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.

But if you in your pain call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse that naught but the sweat of your brows hall wash away that which is written.

You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.

And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,

And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,

And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,

And all work is empty save when there is love;

And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.

And what is it to work with love?

It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.

It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.

It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.

It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,

And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.

Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, ”He who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is nobler than he who ploughs the soil.

And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet.”

But I say, not in sleep but in the over-wakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;

And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.

Work is love made visible.

And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. 

For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.

And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.

And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.”

Although obviously from a different time there are several important elements regarding the attitude towards work to be extracted from Gibran’s masterpiece.

One of them is that work is an integrated part of life and something that we can choose to treasure to do.

Another is that there is no hierarchy of work; that all work is important. Yes, a person working with IT might get paid a lot more than a person installing windows, yet in the midst of winter, we all appreciate a lot more having windows in our house, and thus a pleasant indoor climate, than an application on our phone that tells us what our BMI is. If you don’t agree with me, try the difference!

Yet most important may be that work done without love, in an indifferent state, doesn’t lead to anything good, and I dare to say that it doesn’t lead to anything good neither for the one who does the work – meaning you – not for the one who is supposed to benefit from it – meaning the client. 

Thus, being indifferent towards your work may be the key to your own destruction, whereas loving what we do, regardless of what we do, may be the key to our own success. 

So, how may we learn to love our work?

--- To be continued –