I wound up talking to an old friend today, someone I hadn’t talked to in two years. We exchanged news (she now has a grandchild!), and then she said something about being sorry about not having called me. Well, I said, it’s not like I called you, and besides we’re both workaholics. That’s true, she said. But what I really called you about, I continued, is this…
…and then we got down to work, because of course I didn’t call her just to socialize. At this point, I guess I’m supposed to apologize for working all the time and not socializing enough. In his book Walden, Henry Thoreau opines, “Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow. As for work, we haven’t any of any consequence.” The hell with it, I’m not going to apologize to the likes of Henry Thoreau. I like to work, and if I take a thousand stitches today it’s because it gives me joy and pleasure to do so.
Wish I was up on my Thoreau. He might argue that because you love it, it isn’t work. I am of the belief that the world would be better without jobs that are only done for money.
I like to work too. I like work for money or not for money. Work, to me, is creating something of value (and I don’t mean monetary) for the world. Part of the reason so many people don’t like “to work” is that the work they are doing is *not* of value to the world, or they don’t/won’t see any value in it. You know? “Working” at, say, McDonald’s (which more than a few of my students do) does not feel very valuable. It takes an enormous effort to see the value in this kind of meaningless work, work done just for profit — McDonald’s, the McDonald’s worker. Camus, in his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” addresses this kind of work, the kind of work Sisyphus was condemned to for eternity. Never mind the reason Sisyphus was condemned, it’s the punishment of meaningless work for all time that Camus addresses. Yet, there’s a ray of hope — perhaps — in the essay. “We must imagine Sisyphus happy.” I think we must. Even meaningless work can provide a kind of joy: seeing the work itself as its own challenge. Hard to do sometimes, but we might as well. To live otherwise is to condemn ourselves to meaninglessness.
Will @ 1 — Thoreau offers a fairly nuanced argument against early capitalism, which is written in the style of broad American humorists of the early 19th C. Which makes it very difficult sometimes to figure out exactly what the hell he’s saying. My felling is that it’s always safe to critique Thoreau — it’s like mud-wrestling pigs (t a certain point you realize the pig really likes it), or killing the Buddha every time you meet him.
((I wish Monty Python had done a skit on meeting the Buddha, along the lines of their famous “Mary, Queen of Scots” skit:
“Are you Siddhartha Gotama, the Buddha?”
“I am.”
“Take that, Siddhartha Gotama, the Buddha!!”
[sound of hitting, grunts from Buddha, things breaking, crashing, etc.]))
Jean @ 2 — Jeez, with such similar attitudes towards work, you’d think the two of us were siblings or something.
As far as meaningless work, I’ve had my share of meaningless jobs. Meaningless jobs still beat the hell out of unemployment. And actually, the nice thing about meaningless jobs is that when you punch out at the end of the day, you’re done — unlike my present job, which as much as I like it really never ends.
What did you feel about your meaningless jobs (of which I know you’ve had your share)?
When I had meaningless jobs — repetitive, not challenging, work toward no creative end — I tried to make them have meaning. I’d either carry around a notebook and write down ideas for stories or poems or essays, or, I’d challenge myself to work faster and better and be smarter at what I had to do. Like Sisyphus rolling the rock back up the hill: I’d be the best darn rock roller ever.
All that said it didn’t always work. Organizing the candy aisle in the drug store, for instance, was mind numbing. That was one of those jobs where the clock never seemed to move forward. And even when it did I found myself miserable that I was wishing minutes of my life away.
Which is why I teach now. I can’t ever ever work in a job where I am bound to a particular eight or nine hours of a day. So. Hmm. Now I work about, oh, 12 or so hours on any given day. But, hey. Those are good hours, all of them.