“I do not like work, even when someone else does it.” Mark Twain
‘Work’ I struggle with with the word. It’s supposed to be something to respect and admire. You work to earn your daily bread and pay the bills. I’m OK with taking responsibility for myself and doing what it takes to earn that paycheck, Where I have trouble is liking that activity. If they have to pay me to be there, what makes anyone think I should like working? Society wants it all to be simple. Work is proper and satisfying. Work is what you do most of the time so you can play some of the time. The problem is that it is still work and most of the time is a lot of time. Then I retired and life got more complicated.
At first it was a relief not to have to drive 25 miles to sit in a place with uninteresting people and pretend to believe that the projects I was assigned were important. It was fantastic to wake up each day knowing that I did not have to go anywhere or do anything but that didn’t last. It seems that somewhere along the line, I started to believe that my value was defined by what I was hired to do. If I wasn’t being paid, did that mean that I was worth nothing? It was troubling.
In my youth, I was idealistic. I thought I would find meaning in a job. I was certain that my commitment would be matched by my employer. I kept the faith. From time to time the stars would align and life would seem perfect. In those moments, my mission in life seemed to match the job I was given and so long as it lasted I was inspired, inspiring and productive. I look back on those periods with pride and pleasure but they weren’t the majority of my career. Most of the time, what I did to earn money was dog-work- activity that someone valued enough to pay me to do it but not activity that filled me with pride and satisfaction. I burnt out.
Still, I’d been raised by parents who lived through the depression. They trained me to see work as my life mission and that belief defined my attitude toward work. My worth was dependent upon it and I never questioned it’s value or it’s number one priority in my life mission until I retired. My years in retirement have forced me to reconsider that position.
In retirement I have an income that doesn’t depend on work (although I can’t deny that working produced it) what do I think about work now? It is complicated. No one expects anything from me these days. I don’t tell people what I do because retired is not a job. It requires no work and no one ever feels the need to challenge my lack of productive effort. No one, that is, but me. How do I justify my existence to myself? This is where I struggle.
No one is paying me for producing anything but doing nothing is not satisfying so I find things to do. Are those things work? Perhaps not because nobody is paying me. This activity produces no income and I do it because I want to- not to get paid. Does that mean it isn’t work? I struggle with that. How can it be work when you want to do it? The depression mindset that I learned is challenged.
So my retirement activities stretch my simple definition of work and force a more comprehensive life philosophy. I am not defined by what I do to pay my bills and my life mission is creating a fulfilling life. Earning money is merely a part of the process. If doing something is moving me in the right life direction then it is a mission. Work is any activity that I need to do in order to support that movement. It doesn’t affect it one way or the other. I need to do it for financial reasons but any work would do.
So in my retired state, I have a more healthy understanding of life and work than in my earlier years. I can honestly look at work and say, “I don’t like it.” Before I would try to find justification to fool me into thinking that I liked it. Now I can be more clear. Work is anything I don’t want to do. It certainly
