Going to Work:  A Curse or a Calling?  

In Dialogue with Mark Guterman and Dan King 

July 14, 2011

12:00pm-1:30pm Eastern

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What Is Work?

The English word, work, is derived from the Indo-European root werg-on, meaning "to do or act."  Similarly, the German, werk, refers to "action and performance."  The French used the word travail, derived from the Old Latin tripalium, "an instrument of torture composed of three stakes!" Travail means both "exceedingly hard work" and "intense pain and agony."

Most of us would not go so far as to liken our work to "intense pain and agony," but we nonetheless infer that it is an unpleasant, burdensome activity.  Even Studs Terkel, the highly-esteemed expert on the topic says "... work, is, by its very nature about violence -- to the spirit as well as to the body.  It is about ulcers as well as accidents, about shouting matches as well as fistfights, about nervous breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around.  It is above all about daily humiliations.  To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us."

Sounds rather painful and agonizing to me.  What many have come to accept as "all in a day's work" involves a "job" -- working fifty to sixty hours per week or more to get ahead, putting in time now so we can enjoy life later, and selling our souls to organizations which have little or no connection to our own principles and values.  Is this what work is? 

Throughout history, work has been woven into the fabric of society, influencing not only its culture, but often its principles and values.  During the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome, work was held in high esteem, only to be disdained by later aristocratic societies as vulgar and disagreeable.  Early Christians and Jews viewed work as a virtuous activity, filled with moral purpose and meaning, until the rational principles of profit and loss reduced work to merely "a means to an end." 

Work helps us understand why we are here.  It prescribes our purpose or mission and gives others a quick snapshot of our role in the community and in society.  Noted philosopher and writer, Bertrand Russell wrote:  "Consistent purpose is not enough to make life happy, but is an indispensable condition of a happy life.  And consistent purpose embodies itself mainly in work." 

To be sure, future societies will look upon our principles and values to interpret our relationship to life and livelihood.  What will they learn?  What will be our legacy of work?  Will we bequeath an improved quality of worklife to future generations?

Winston Churchill said, "the further backward you look, the further forward you can see." To build a culture of work that is recognizably more passionate and purposeful than we now have, we must dedicate ourselves to the restoration of a purpose or mission to work, where respect for the human spirit is given the cultural centrality it demands -- and where the connection between work and nature remains sacred.  We need to go back before we can move ahead, for we are clearly still a "work in progress."