Work is an opportunity to bring something forth – to create something, complete something, invent something original and authentic.
Alexandra Stoddard,
Daring to Be Yourself
.
Update (Tuesday): 40 minutes cardio (walk through town); 8 minutes stretching.
We fight against work. Our American culture celebrates days off, relaxation, vacation, rest, television, games, sports, contests of any kind, races, entertainment: not work, not any more.
Work is a punishment to us, a drudgery we must get through to get to the “good stuff” of life. Books like
The 4-Hour Workweek and the popularity of passive income rise from this mindset. Of course, it’s great if you can work more reasonable hours and spend more time with your family. And I am all for the idea of generating income through any ethical means you can. (You might notice the ads on this website…) If you are producing anyway, why not attempt to make money? It’s good sense.
But the obsession that I notice, the one that worries me, is not that people want to simplify a bit or be smarter about how they earn money for bills; simplifying and smart earning are potential steps to improving your life. What is not a step toward life improvement is the “I-hate-work” attitude.
What’s to hate about work? We’ve all had jobs, at one time or another, that didn’t suit us, perhaps, that were far more drudge than delight. Maybe we hated those jobs. In high school, I hated babysitting. I liked the kids, because I was very picky about who I chose to babysit for. But I hated the times – nights and weekends – when I had to be away from my family, cozy at home or doing fun things without me. Even though I hated babysitting, though, I got the work concept and I liked it: I give you my time, service, or product, and you pay me. An equitable exchange. I put up with the timing I didn’t like because work was worth it.
In college, I waitressed (among other things). I hated those hours too, nights and weekends again, but I loved the work when it was busy and I was running, jumping, talking, smiling, being efficient, making people happy, working. I hated being there on slow lunches during the week, or on dead holiday nights when everybody in my college town was out of town. Four or five tables, four or five hours of looking for something to fix, or clean, or make, or do, and twenty bucks in my pocket when I walked out? The immediate problem seemed to be not enough pay; the real problem was not enough work. Lack of work created lack of pay.
And that’s the problem with many passive income ideas, and with almost all get-rich-quick schemes. The nature of work is that you produce something of value to generate a fair income. An equitable exchange. Value for value. Passive income can work if you create value that will last and can be used over and over again, as in getting royalties from a book or rent from an apartment complex. But expecting to generate income from no value almost always leads you toward unethical “work”: spamming, cheating, plagiarizing, defrauding, etc.
“It is not that men are ill fed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they make their bread, and therefore look to wealth as the only means of pleasure.” John Ruskin,
Stones of Venice.
We buy into ideas that don’t make sense and can’t, ethically, make us money, because we have not learned to value work for its own sake. We think of work as nothing more than a frustrating job we wish we could afford to lose. Money seems like the answer.
The real answer is finding the work you love by learning to love work.
Resources: The best place to start is in the Bible, book of
Genesis, first two chapters. Here we see man and woman, in a perfect world, freshly created. Here we watch God give them their instructions: work. Work is not a result of sin, didn’t come as a punishment after man’s fall (though it did change, and that’s part of our problem); work was something for which we were created.
Tip: Determine your own attitude toward work, whether it’s a weekend job, a full-time career, or an endless stream of laundry, cooking, cleaning, organizing, and teaching. Do you strive to get through stuff so you can get to the good stuff? Are you cheating yourself out of the delight and fulfillment that come from doing your work with zeal and a standard of excellence?
The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down. Proverbs 14:1
