your job does not love you
and that's more than fine
Dear attentive reader,
Let me begin with the following question, do you seek to be loved or feared? To be loved is to be cherished, to be held close, and to be known. Love is located near the heart because, once you experience it, it becomes vital. You need it to consistently pump nourishment from your head to your toes.
To be feared is to be unknown, held at a distance, and distrusted. Fear is located in the mind. While it can be visceral, physiological, and irrational, fear is primarily an act of the brain. It is the absence of real feeling. It is the human in flight.
So, what do you seek and from where do you seek it?
For me, I seek love. Constantly. I seek to be loved by others, I seek to love others. I seek loving environments, stories, and places. To me, love is visible through care and maintenance. Love can be seen in the design of a user experience. Tasted in the quality of a meal. Felt in the warmth of a genuine embrace or smile. Identified in-between the fine lines of an ideology. I am always looking to see the love in whatever is placed in front of me.
I am interested in love because love is open, trusting, freeing, and, honestly, it’s just so much fun. I love to write. Writing is fun. I love my best friends. When I am with them, or even in our little group chats, we have so much fun. I love stunning architecture, luscious gardens, slow mornings, rice paddy fields, eating with my hands, and music that makes me dance. All fun.
If you love your job, you never have to work a day. If your work is fun, it’s not work.
This particular message has burrowed into my mind like a hungry termite. This societal obsession with finding one’s passion through one’s job. It appears, to me at least, that the frenetic desire to love your job is fairly unique to the American elite psyche and it is a fearful impulse. We spend so much of our lives working so I want to enjoy what I do said a friend to me. I don’t disagree at all! But you have to wonder, what if we simply spent less time working? Might the world, be it the economy, schools, hospitals, newspapers, roads, construction sites, software companies, airports, pharmacies, and grocers, still be able to run?
I am still of the belief that to be driven and in pursuit of excellence is positive, but the love your job propaganda is the wrong proposition. It fuels an egotistical culture as opposed to one in which highly talented and educated people are cooperating towards worthwhile societal goals. As a result, I have seen many a peer operate in a self-serving silo. They seek promotions, awards, and prestige over acting in service of a greater mission. Not all my peers are like this, of course. Some seem to have replaced their ambition altogether. Others have been termite-free their entire lives. But the vast majority continue to grip, fearfully, onto the idea that if they do not love their job they are doomed to an unhappy life.
What I have noticed between the older millennial to younger Gen Z progression is a crisis of faith in loving your job. I see peers, and especially those younger, asking the right questions. Possibly you should love your job, but does your job love you back? How do you know? Is it how the organization treats you? Values your contributions and needs? Understands the personal sacrifices you make on its behalf? The ways in which you have struggled and triumphed so that it might succeed? Is it love when you feel invested in, like a plum seed planted in the ground?
In honor of the topics discussed in this essay I want to share a bit about my own labor that goes into this Making Meaning From Feelings. I spend up to 10-20 hours per essay, and I do think what I write is worth paying for. I also believe that if you pay to read, you read more closely. I currently have three readers who believe my work is worth their money! Liza Gurtin, Anarghya Vardhana, and Ananda Vardhana. I would love for more of my regular readers, of which there are now 213 (yay!), to consider becoming paid subscribers, not because I asked, not because you feel obligated, but because you feel that each essay is worth $2 dollars.
To upgrade to paid go to MMFF’s main page and in the top right corner where it says Subscribe in the screenshot below, you should see Upgrade to Paid.
I too am infected by the love your job milieu but am finding my own alleviation. As the fog lifts, I see more clearly what is before me. Countless hours, dollars, water, electricity, you name it have been poured into me in hopes that I am a net positive for society. This realization and framework can lead to pressure. You went to Stanford, what do you have to show for it? I used to feel this pressure was a burden, but it has metabolized into a kind of spiritual animation. I am not religious so I would not use the exact words of serving a higher power but I do feel spiritually called to serve. Serve society. Serve humanity. To act in service of justice and equality.
If you like what you’ve read so far please consider referring a friend to my publication.
shifting technology, shifting selves
For the last few years we were sold one idea, that AGI would mean a more prosperous future, but that future is here and, like many warned, such as the indomitable Timnit Gebru, it is increasingly concentrating power and wealth into the hands of a few.
So, will we continue to pretend that this technology we are building will contribute to all humans flourishing or will we recognize that it predominantly benefits corporations looking to replace human workers with automation?
Lately I have been enjoying the brilliance of the musical artist Cynthia Erivo. Her performances of Defying Gravity and I’m Here share a theme of an ostracized and beaten-down woman finding her voice. What is moving for me, from both performances, is our human capacity to arrive at ourselves. This arrival, for Erivo and for anyone who dare try, is a choice and often a difficult one. For some it can nearly kill them, yet somehow this life-force yearns to see the light of day.
I think so many of us, especially those of us who went to Stanford or Stanford-like schools and operate in these social circles, so desperately cling to our work identities and mistake it for who we are. I worry that this work identity-ness comes from a place of not knowing one’s true worth. Not knowing the significance of one’s life both spiritually and politically, but the worth of my life, and yours dear reader, extends far beyond the confines of the professional world. And this house of cards is due to crumble any time now with white collar work undergoing immense changes due to AGI. Now is, in fact, the best possible time to reconsider our relationship to self and to work, and to make the difficult choices that allow us to arrive.
So, do you seek love or fear? Will you identify with what you do or who you are? The moment I chose the who over the what I became untouchable. Like fire.
This essay was partially inspired by Dr. MLK Jr.’s speech What is your life’s blueprint?
One of the best thought provoking articles!!