In thinking about the subject of earning a living, several nouns come to mind: job and work, of course, but also occupation, profession, trade, calling, career, employment, and livelihood.
I want to explore the differences among those terms, particularly job and work, and, more importantly, the relationship between them and life itself. The subject is worth essaying because too often we develop a mental dichotomy between what we do to earn money and the rest of our lives.Work is a catchall for how most people support themselves and their dependents, whether they work for themselves, another person, or an organization. Job is a subset of work but connotes employment, i.e., being an employee and working in a position for an organization or even another person. In contrast, terms like profession and trade are specific types of work or job. Career describes a long time spent either in a specific type of job or work, or a long time with an organization. Livelihood connotes the income someone derives from work or job. Calling is something different entirely and connotes the inspiration and determination to pursue a specific endeavor to obtain a livelihood.
The two most common terms we use for earning a living are work and job. The difference between work and job is particularly relevant in this society where work is typically manifested as a job. Further, jobs too often carry with them boredom, demeaning subservience, constant fear of being fired, harassment, breaking or ignoring the law, or even risk to body or psyche. I heard someone remark once that there is a group of people who are not happy with their job. That group is called Everyone. What’s more, they have regular meetings—down at the local bar.
The fundamental challenge is how one might earn a living and at the same time achieve a measure of contentment. This challenge is based on three realities. The first reality is that most of us have to work to support ourselves. It is easy to theorize about obtaining fulfillment through one’s work, but that becomes a wild dream in the face of paying bills and meeting expectations of family and even friends. The second reality is that for most of us, work means having a job, a position for some organization be it as a janitor, engineer, accountant, or groundskeeper. The third reality is that finding work is often difficult. It can be easier if one has a specific trade, profession, training, experience, or degree that is in demand or is merely seeking an unskilled position. Even then, getting a job requires finding and then connecting with possible employers (including dealing with awful, senseless personnel departments) as well as a lot of luck. What also comes into play is one’s personality and, too often, one’s appearance. Looking for work often is an ego-bruising experience involving the reality of frequent rejection.
Thoreau addressed the subject this way: “The ways by which you may get your money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earn money ‘merely’ is to be truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for. You must get your living by loving.” Of course, Thoreau wrote that as a young man who mostly lived with his family and worked off and on in the family pencil factory. Nevertheless, his idealism is insightful.
Given the realities of work, how do we heed Thoreau’s comment that “[y]ou must get your living by loving”? Or is that even possible? I admit immediately that I don’t know. I never was able to get my “living my loving.” I never cared for the work that I did, and I feel some regret that I never was able to find something that resonated more with me, either due to my lack of imagination or lack of courage. Nevertheless, I try to avoid giving much thought about those frustrations of my working years because regret is both a myopic emotion based on questionable memory and because it also can be a path to sorrow and even madness. Further, I am generally content with the person I am, and I realize that my years of work, frustrating though they were, were important in forming who I am now. So, perhaps in one sense, I did get my living that way.
These personal ruminations aside, however, I think Thoreau’s statement offers a key insight into how to approach work and job. By that I mean that getting our “living by loving” has less to do with the specifics of how we earn a living and more to do with ourselves. While we may have little control over the environment, personalities, and culture of the work we each do, we have great control over how we react to those specifics.
The key point is that irrespective of our work, we must maintain our own sense of self, our own identity, our own humanity. The first step in getting our living by loving is to love and respect ourselves, to be ourselves.
Otherwise, we face the risk of becoming someone or something else, of losing our individuality to the organization for which we work, of becoming what we do. On one extreme are people doing unskilled labor who feels so powerless and insignificant in the face of authority that they become faceless machines lacking in pride and self-esteem, or the person behind the window at a local agency who by enforcing rules to the letter creates an aura of faux power.
On the other extreme are some people who become so caught up in their position that it colors their personality: the soldier or cop whose outlook on the world is rigidly authoritarian, or the Fagan-like teacher or college professor who is a martinet in the classroom, the pedagogic bureaucrat who forgets that students are human beings rather than objects.
As I have said other posts, however, there is a big difference between theory and reality. It is one thing to elaborate on Thoreau’s idea of how it might be possible to get one’s living by loving. It is another to feel trapped in a job or a “career” that is boring, demeaning, or otherwise soul-sucking. Given what I know now about myself, about the economic realities of this society in which we are “human resources” instead of human beings, I am unsure what I would do to earn a living if I were seeking work. Further, if I were in my late teens or twenties I have little idea what I would study in school or through some apprenticeship program to prepare myself to enter the world of work.
In any case, if I were seeking work, I would face the Marxian Paradox—not a theory conceived by Karl Marx but rather an observation by Groucho, whose insights I much prefer. Groucho said that he would not want to belong to a country club that would have him as a member. I would have grave doubts about being an employee of any organization that would hire me. I don’t like bureaucracies, personnel departments, and job titles. Nor do I care for bosses, and I think that formal employee evaluations are demeaning (the last one I had was in 1979). When I worked for organizations, I often felt uncomfortable using the term “we” in referring to me as part of the establishment.
More than thirty years ago, one of my best friends told me that if he were dictator he would appoint me to one of the highest-level positions in the government—and then appoint a group of people to keep an eye on me at all times. He knew that I think for myself and that my loyalty is to myself more than to any organization. I consider that one of the best compliments I have ever received.
Maybe we should continue this discussion at the next regular meeting of Disgruntled Employees Anonymous down at the corner bar.