Commentary: Even the Most Amazing of Jobs Have Their Moments of Drudgery!
Yesterday, I wrote a somewhat lengthy post that focused rather substantially on about 40 years of working life, much of which turned out nothing like I visualized when I was younger.
What lies along this overgrown path?
While I was doing some paperwork today — a thing I really don't enjoy — I found my mind wandering to some of the many fascinating conversations I have had with people about their work, and some of the fascinating professions I have come across in my lifetime.
As I said, I really don't enjoy paperwork. However, I was amply qualified and could very easily have become an accountant.
And it got me to thinking about one of the things we ended up discussing at a so called ”work purpose” workshop back in the 1990's where a large part of the objective was trying to hone in on what a perfect kind of work might be, for each of the workshop attendees.
As I sat there, listening to people drone on about "not being happy at work," I remembered how the older members of my family (when I was in my 20s) grew up with the paradigm that such a thing as ”being happy at work” was not even a consideration in choosing a profession. You did what you were good at and got paid well for, you went to work and you got paid and that was the end of that. If what you were doing happened to make you happy, well that was just an unexpected bonus.
So getting back to that work purpose workshop, one of the things that became fairly clear was that even the people who were working that's something that made them feel truly joyful still had to deal with times and tasks that were boring and filled with drudgery.
What's my point here?
Well, I think we sometimes end up carrying around unrealistic expectations concerning ”how happy” and ”how satisfying” our work is supposed to be. I'm not entirely sure how we got sidetracked into this cultural paradigm that every single moment of our lives is supposed to be filled with joy and happiness — and I'm open to the possibility that I am just one of the Eeyores of the human species — but it strikes me as an unrealistic ambition.
The cynic in me thinks that maybe it was just a notion introduced by marketers to keep us eternally striving for something that could never be accomplished.
Does that make me sound pessimistic and negative? Or am I merely being realistic about the realities of life as it actually IS, rather than as our wishful thinking would like it to be?
The realist in me says that we may actually be doing ourselves a disfavor by becoming excessively fixated on this idea of happiness because it ultimately is an ambition that precludes us experiencing the full range of human emotions!
If you're just in a "happiness coma" all the time, what about the rest of this amzing human experience?
Just something to think about...
Thanks for reading, and have a great remainder of your week!
How about YOU? Do you think we have unrealistic expectations about "how happy" work can make us? Is it even the TASK of work to make us happy? Or just to make us MONEY, and to find happiness elsewhere? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20211215 18:30 PST
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It's not the job's job to make you happy, it's your job (not you personally) to make yourself happy with the job. Find parts of it you like, people you like or focus on what it gives you that you want and need.
I think to a large part work has gotten a bad rap.
I've gone through periods of time not enjoying a job, but for the most part, I always enjoyed work and gaining skills and the challenge of the interpersonal relationships, etc.
But I feel like people have "trained" themselves to hate work.
In my opinion, you are not sounding pessimistic nor negative in the least. It's just that while many prefer to see everything through some kind of colorful glasses, you generally tend to want to see everything with your own eyes without accessories.
In fact, I'm not totally sure if what I'm going to say now is something that only is acquired with advanced age. But what I really have observed for quite some time, is that there is not and won't exist such thing as ”being happy at work” as long as what we are doing we see it as work.
I suppose that over the years we all have met multitudes of people who greatly enjoyed for many years the activity of what they were doing as their supposed job. And perhaps, we even dared to believe that they were truly happy with what they were doing. But as soon as they realized that their joyful daily activity was only a responsibility, a commitment and a duty to continue doing it solely to please others, all that initial enthusiasm, satisfaction and "happiness" gradually faded away.
In my ol'fart biased opinion, I'd dare to bet that in the only one moment in which we could be remotely closer to feeling a glimpse of that elusive thing we call happiness, it is and will only be when we feel that we can freely do whatever we want, when we want and wherever we want without feeling at any time like if it were an obligation that we have no choice but doing it.
And in this particular biased opinion of an old man, I would go as far as to assure that what I have just said above is exactly what everyone without exception seeks and wants to achieve in life. Even if they don't know it yet. ];)
I am a person who believes that job satisfaction when working for someone else is a myth. I have had jobs where I liked some aspects of them. I only had one job in my life that I felt even close to being satisfied. And that was after I got my Masters Degree in Library Science. I got hired for a job as a book cataloger right before graduation. I LOVED that job. For the first two years. And then they told me I would have to be supervising two direct reports. And that was the end of being happy on my job. I working for myself now and I love it and that job is long ago in my rear view mirror. If I were to take a job now it would merely be a means to an end. That end being the paycheck. I am pretty sure that if I asked my older relatives if they were happy on their jobs that answer I would get overall would be that it didn't matter. They had families to support. Noone cared if they were happy.
I think you are realistic. Always have I said having that Job would be great, then I work it and boom I have the coveted job, and you are correct drudgery in small doses.
Even being self-employed as a reseller, I love the buy, the listing, the selling, hate the paperwork lol