Examining Our Working Lives

Here’s what a professor of theology at Georgetown University told me when I was young, when I happened to have asked him about his career, and his life more generally: Most people work 50 weeks of the year doing something they don’t enjoy (substitute words like hate, resent, put up with, etc.) so they can take a two-week vacation to Europe or the Caribbean.  I do something I love every day of every year, and the idea of taking a vacation from it is beyond stupid; it’s ridiculous.

What I told my kids a generation later was quite similar: You’re going to spend about half your waking hours working, i.e., situating yourself in a position where you can buy food, clothing, transportation, shelter, and so on, the things that make you self-sustaining. Given this, the only rational way forward is to find something you genuinely like and to get damn good at it.

To all young readers who are trying to make sense of all of this in the development of your lives, I hope you find the words here meaningful.