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I woke up this morning wanting to work. That's the way it is these days. Impatiently I unload the dishwasher and sip my coffee, itching to flip open my laptop and discover what my world's been doing since I slept.
I am lucky. I love what I do. Since our company is virtual, I can do it pretty much any time anywhere. That familiar divisor, the weekend, now strikes me as an artifact from the old days when work was geography-based. You went to work in a separate town. Your work life differed from your home life. In America, a consensus myth grew that home life was preferable to work life. "I'm working so hard" was a comment that invited condolence, not congratulation. Days off, a long paid vacation, and early retirement became luscious goals. Work was bad, ease was good.
To me those values are upside down. Work is the principal activity of our adult life, except for sleep. Why not love it? What joy can be sweeter than raring to get to work every day? Loving your work makes everything better. It makes you nicer at home, less of a victim. It makes you feel you're adding to life, not serving a penal sentence. It makes your intimates and colleagues feel better about their lives, for gladness is as contagious as gloom. Loving one's work is, to my mind, the definition of success. Money is nice to have, but what use is money if your life is a misery. Fame or power or glamour can't be nifty if you're feeling blue.
My sentiments toward work have been called naïve. "Get real, Carll," I've been advised, "everyone hates their work. Work is something you've got to do to live. That's the way it is."
I realize that there are plenty of jobs which don't seem like fun. Does every toll-taker or garbage collector really get a kick out of his or her day? These jobs need doing, and thank heavens there are folks willing to do them, but man, they seem hard. People need to eat, so they do jobs they don't like. That will always be true. But for those who have a choice, my advice is invariably the same: Choose work you like. No paycheck can compensate for a squandered life. Or find ways to like the work you have. Often people tell me they are "stuck" in a job they dislike. They are stuck because they have a mortgage, kids, car payments, tuitions, a spouse who will leave them if they don't earn enough.
If you think you're stuck, you are because as the Stoics taught us two millennia ago, "stuck" is a state of mind, not a physical circumstance. "Men are disturbed not by things," wrote the irreplaceable Epictetus, "but by the view which they take of them." Epictetus was a slave and a cripple who lived in the Roman Empire in the first century A.D. I remember the day I encountered him. I was in my twenties, grumping about some disappointment. I'm not sure what put his book into my hand (there is only one Epictetus title, a group of sayings collected by a disciple). Here was this guy loaded with worries that made mine look like mosquito bites and he was so calm and good-humored and lucid and in control. The way to change your mood, he told me, is to change your view. Even a prisoner, he said, is free free to take his own life. So if he chooses to remain a prisoner that is a choice, not a doom. My job is terrific but even if it weren't, I'd try to follow Epictetus' counsel and teach myself to love it. Love your work and you will love our life. Love your life and you will help others to love theirs. And if you don't love your work, either change your work or figure out a way to like what you've got.
Not making enough money? Epictetus helps there too. "Wealth," he said, "consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants." Seems so obvious, doesn't it? If only obvious advice were easier to accept.
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