Everyone works. While the economy has evolved, everyone has always worked.
10,000 years ago, if you wanted to survive, you would hunt for your food. This is work.
If you were cold, you made clothing. This is work.
If you wanted to share valuable information with your family for survival, you taught them. This is work.
Today, if you want food, you spend money that you or someone has earned providing goods or services to others. This is the same kind of work.
Work is effort. Work is focused attention in a creative process.
Animals also hunt, teach, and improve their efficiency in work. But what makes humans different than brutes is our ability to reflect.
Work teaches us about ourselves. We learn about our strengths, tendencies, and weaknesses through work. We self realize through work.
In this process, man is able to see himself better - his uniqueness but also his shared qualities with others.
In this way, work is unifying. All humans have worked. And all humans will work.
Work - reflective work - is what makes us human.
Entering into work with an open and contemplative mindset is to be fully human.
This unifying style of work is authentic “human work” and makes it evident that there is really only “one work” that is really properly labeled “human.”
There are billions of jobs, but one work.
Billions of humans, but one work.
When we approach our job with a “necessary evil” mindset, we cheapen work and make of ourselves mercenaries instead of missionaries.
Even the most mindless work, if done with a reflective and contemplative approach, can become fruitful and true “work.”