The meaning of work
What is “work?”
I think that this is an important question to ask yourself. It’s one of those important questions that we develop an intuitive understanding of without actually answering the question for ourselves. I also think that the answers we live with may or may not serve us as well as they could, we need to ask a better question to cut through the generational, and cultural inheritance of what work is, and what it means to us.
I’ve asked myself these questions a lot; “what is work?” & “what does work mean to me?” When I was in my early twenties I even had the word “work” tattooed on my body in an attempt to make the meaning my own.
Miriam Webster’s Dictionary:
“to exert oneself physically or mentally especially in sustained effort for a purpose”
Cutting through the fat, of my story, what I’ve inherited from my culture, family, and how that’s impacted my life, the ramifications of those impacts, etc… here is my working answer thus far.
WORK = Disciplined effort over time.
Because this is English, I’m forced to use synonyms to describe the core word. It’s like being able to point to a bunch of bushes to describe a tree. I highly recommend checking out Miriam Webster’s Dictionary results on this word. There are upwards of over a dozen definitions under each category, verb, noun, and adjective. “to exert oneself physically or mentally especially in sustained effort for a purpose”
To understand work, and eventually, the nature of work, let's break it down and examine what each of its components means in more granular detail.
Discipline, according to one definition in Miriam Webster’s Dictionary means “control gained by enforcing obedience or order.” Control, force, and order are common verbs employed in most of the definitions.
My own definition of discipline is “the choice to be consistent in thought or deed over time, despite circumstances or alternatives (this is the essence of growth – biological, mental, or in the world). This mirrors the controlling, and ordering aspects of the dictionary's definition.
Effort, I define by its opposite “not the easy path.” Once again Miriam Webster’s “conscious exertion of power: hard work.” is another bush to point at in an effort to describe a tree.
“Over time’ appears on its surface to be easy to parse, and that’s where we’ll stay to avoid going too deep into the philosophical realms of thermodynamics. But we do have to touch on entopic, and creative forces because it appears as if “work” and its interlocutors have an ordering property. Something that goes against the tendency for things to fall into disarray. It’s a thing that is, “not the easy path.”
Now we begin to understand the word work, but what does it mean to us? What does it mean to you? In my own life, it has meant struggle. It has meant meeting the expectations of my family, and the people around me. It has been the thing that I’ve based my self-worth on, and it has been what others have judged me by.
I’ve worked for others, building their agenda, and I’ve worked for myself building my agenda. I’ve seen work as a toxic extraction of one’s life essence, time, meaning, and soul. A waste of their expression on Earth, and the potential betterment of all mankind, and I have seen it as the fulfillment of all those high aspirations.
Now it feels like a glass ceiling. It keeps me down by always moving the goalposts. "This is work, and you will achieve greatness if you do this, now this, now this, now this…" It feels like a shouting match between an artist, and an industrialist in my mind. “Do this one thing until you receive this one outcome,” & “life is way more dynamic and holistic, you need to be balanced in order to succeed. If you’re not balanced in your efforts your success will be hollow, and counterproductive.”
The simple advice I have to constantly remind myself of is to pick what’s necessary, maybe it's your day job or your primary source of income, and do that until you have met your needs. If you’re an artist at heart like me, always wanting to chase different rabbits (chase two rabbits catch none), pick one thing, and devote the most time to that.
For me, it is going to look like this:
6 hours to revive my business.
4 hours to my household responsibilities.
2 hours for my side projects
And then 2 hours for the maintenance of body mind, and spirit.
This is a work day, 4 days a week. 3 days a week are weekends (coordinating with my wife’s schedule) where the emphasis will be put on the relationship, and the shared projects, plus self-care, Sharpening the saw as Steven Covey puts it in his book the 7 Habits of Highly Effective people.”
