Our relationship with work… it’s complicated. We love it. We hate it. We love to hate it. We feel guilty hating it. It’s a privilege that we’re grateful for. It’s a necessary evil. We resent it. We’re workaholics. We come alive and shine some days. Other days, we feel dead inside; we’re just going through the motions. We live to work. We work to live. We’re all over the map. And it’s not really all that surprising; humans are as different as they come.

 

Maybe you’re a type A person ensuring every last detail at work is buttoned down no matter the time of day or night. Maybe you’re cool clocking out at 5pm on the dot because the work will all be there tomorrow. Maybe you’re more of an artistic type who’s up at all hours for days on end lost in the vortex of your latest masterpiece. Or maybe you’re at home binge-watching Portlandia waiting for inspiration to strike.

 

Our broader work culture is also shaped by the culture and society we live in. And while it’s partly based on stereotypes, there is undoubtedly some truth to it. For example, in China, maybe you’re a proverbial cog in a machine whose up-time is 100%, day and night, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. In Japan, your identity and honor are so tied to your work that you’d literally fall on a sword before you shame your company and family. In Italy, the running joke is that they love a good, long three-hour lunch or better, a multi-day strike. In Germany, the trains run on time down to the second. In Europe they actually take a 4 to 5-week summer vacation, while in the States, we’re frozen solid at our desks with overzealous AC pumping through our offices and veins as we pine for the weekend.

 

I’d also say that age, or time on the earth as I like to say, is also an influencing factor in our attitudes and understanding of work. I think as we grow and change as humans, our relationship with work evolves too. But, regardless of gray hair, the country you live in, or where you fall on the Myers Brigg’s Indicator, there is some innate part of the very fabric of our beings tied directly to work. Being as individualistic as we are in the US, I think that’s even more true of us. Our identity and our work are all wrapped up – for better or worse. Some of us are fine being dubbed workaholics – shoot, we prefer it. Some of us have to maintain several jobs to live. Those of us able to be more balanced in this space, work hard to create and maintain work-life boundaries. Others of us have circumstances that demand attention and separation from work, such as school, being a caregiver to an ill parent, or having small children at home – we simply don’t have a choice.

 

If we go biblical for a moment, here are two very different views on work. On the one hand, maybe “labor” was designed to as punishment because we screwed up the bliss of the Garden of Eden. On the other hand, maybe work was ultimately designed to be our vocation – how we live out the unique expressions of ourselves and our gifts in community on this earth.

 

Where am I going with all of this? Yeah, I’m not so sure either. (Isn’t this fun?!?) But a few months back I fell in love with the English poet and author David Whyte, and his book Crossing the Unknown Sea. The subtitle is Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity, which probably gives you more insight into the nature of this particular body of work. I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that I underlined half the damned thing, which is not super helpful when you’re trying to come back to it later to share about. I run the risk of over-quoting him here so I hope you’ll forgive me – he’s just so insightful.

 

Whyte borrows from the poet William Blake’s concept of having a “firm persuasion,” which he calls a sense of dedication mixed with self-knowledge. Whyte says “…to feel that what we do is right for ourselves and good for the world at exactly the same time—is one of the great triumphs of human existence. … To have a firm persuasion, to set out boldly in our work, is to make a pilgrimage of our labors, to understand that the consummation of work lies not only in what we have done, but who we have become while accomplishing the task.”[1]

 

Read that last line again starting with “to understand.”

Let the part about “who we have become” sink in for a moment.

 

To get to the intersection of “right for ourselves” and “good for the world” is no easy feat; if it were, do you really think so many people would be this dissatisfied with work? Bottom line, it requires a lot from us and it’s not for the faint of heart. Whyte likens this self-awakening and discovery in our life and work to an ongoing conversation with something larger than ourselves. “We need, at every stage in our journey through work, to be in conversation with our desire for something suited to us and our individual natures.”[2] Whyte purports that “our life and our work are both the result of the particular way we hold that passionate conversation.”[3]

 

And he fully acknowledges that it may be terrifying because it drives us to the very limit of ourselves, where passion isn’t enough to get to action. I have often (and still do) feel scared and puny – the opposite of courageous. In my head, courageous looks like Mel Gibson in Braveheart (and as a side note I might be the only human on the planet who never actually saw that movie). I mention this to make the point that we can safely throw out our perceptions of what courage “should” be. Take a minute to enjoy that actually… the act of chucking the “should” out the top of your convertible as you’re speeding down the hills of Monaco in James Bond’s Aston Martin, hair blowing in the warm, ocean breeze. (Oh, sorry, did we just get lost in my day dream? Insert yours.)

 

What I’m saying is that before you count yourself out for not being courageous enough to act on a passion or a dream… listen to how Whyte defines courage. “To be courageous means at the bottom to be heartfelt. To begin with we take only those steps which we can do in a heartfelt fashion and then slowly increase our stride as we become familiar with the direct connection between our passion and our courage.”[4]

 

Whyte reminds us that courage comes from the old French word cuer, meaning heart. To be courageous simply means to be heartfelt[5] – in touch with our true desires and passions. Being heartfelt is being both passionate and courageous. If you’ve got the fire in your belly, you’re in a really good place. And if you don’t right now, that’s OK. Simply having the heartfelt-edness to ask for it, is a beautiful thing. C.S. Lewis talks about how God demands perfection of us – and I think a lot of the time we turn that and demand it from ourselves. (If you’re uncomfortable putting the word God in the sentence, use “I” or “my perfectionist ego overlord” or whoever is driving you towards absolute perfection.) If it’s not perfect, why bother. That thinking becomes a giant roadblock to actually trying.  Lewis talks about God not only being this demanding authority figure, but also our champion and helper. He says, “our Helper… will also be delighted with the first feeble, stumbling effort you make tomorrow to do the simplest duty.”[6]

 

Hear that. The first feeble attempt we make is a delight! We don’t chastise an 8-month old for being a human who can’t successfully walk the runway yet in stilettos. No, we delight in the whole process of walking – tummy time, crawling and standing and wobbling and falling, and then the first step or two, and eventually we lament that this toddler is faster than us and we’re exhausted trying to keep up. How does this relate to you? If you’re dead inside at a job that’s draining your soul, and you can’t even connect to what you were once passionate about all those moons ago, know that the smallest attempts to recall, remember and rekindle a fire of any sort, will never go to waste.

 

Whyte has a fascinating story in the early parts of the book about a man he met who describes his own experience of death and the slow rebirth. It’s ugly. He’s an addict, face-down in the mud of a flower box after a botched attempt at suicide. It was in that very place that he got his first glimmer of something he could work at with his heart. And he lay there, the rain washing over him, being reborn. He wasn’t a formally religious man, but he said of that experience that he felt like he had been given back something akin to “an old memory, a sense of creation, a way back into the world.”[7]

 

As Whyte wraps up this intimate conversation with the stranger, the man speaks into Whyte’s own journey: “We all have our own ground to work, you know. You have yours too. You just have to find out what it is. But you know what? It’s right on the edge of yourself. At the cliff edge of life. That’s the edge you go to. Put yourself in conversation with that edge no matter how frightening it seems.”[8]

 

This past December, I left work at an organization I had been with for almost ten years. The fire in me had shifted, and I found myself suddenly crossing Whyte’s unknown sea. I was (and still am) a willing traveler, but the journey requires a courage that many days I fear I don’t have (enough of). I lose the thread of the Conversation, I forget I’m supposed to even be in Conversation, I avoid the inherent wrestling, creep away from the edge and onto the couch. I am not an innate marketer, I don’t love self-promotion and I’m not a Shark Tank entrepreneur. But I am heartfelt in this journey, so I know courage lies within. Ink Well is born of that fire… in conversation with my heart, gut and God. Perfection is tempting (especially in this line of work!) and success may be elusive at times, but I’m dedicated to sailing on, as the captain, apprentice and crew(wo)man.

 

The cover of the edition of Whyte’s book that I have has the definition of the word work right on it. The second part of that definition strikes me today: “The place where the self meets the world.”

I’ll see you there.

_______
Sources

[1] Whyte, David. Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity. Riverhead Books: New York, 2001. Pgs. 4-5.

[2] Whyte, pg. 23.

[3] Whyte, pg 6.

[4] Whyte, pg 1.

[5] Whyte, pg 14.

[6] Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. Simon and Schuster: New York, 1980. Pg. 174.

[7] Whyte, pg 20.

[8] Whyte, pg 2.