On work, love, and macaroni art | 3-min read

From childhood, so many of us are told to chase our dreams, pursue our passions, and find work that fills us with purpose. We’re encouraged to do what we love and love what we do and never settle for anything less.

Few of us question this conventional wisdom, which feels wholesome and hopeful.

But what if we’re completely wrong?

What if loving work is impossible, or at best, highly unlikely? And what if the effort we spend seeking a meaningful job is doing more damage than good?

Is it a trap!?

This week, I stumbled upon two fascinating pieces challenging the notion that we should love our work. In "The Case Against Loving Your Job" and "Loving Your Job is a Capitalist Trap", Journalist Sarah Jaffe and Professor Erin Cech separately argue that we should not seek meaning through work. (Pro-market friends, stay with me – I promise there’s a lesson for us all.)

Both take the very political stance that work, as we structure it today, is exploitative and incompatible with fulfillment, whether you’re an Amazon delivery driver suffering under the pressures of low wages and scant benefits or a Fortune 500 CFO burnt out and always-on. As Cech provocatively writes,

“When people place paid employment at the center of their meaning-making journey, they hand over control of an essential part of their sense of self to profit-seeking employers and the ebbs and flows of the global economy.”

For Jaffe and Cech, we’re searching for love in the wrong place. And, like the stress many feel in their quest to find romantic love, chasing an invented ideal can be exhausting, frustrating, and painfully disappointing. Even worse, it can be unequal. Cech argues that pursuing passion is an option limited to the privileged; considering that 75% of U.S. households are currently in debt and 65% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, few can afford to prioritize purpose over survival.

The alternatives

Rather than seek fulfillment through work, Jaffe and Cech say we should focus on (a) improving working conditions for everyone and (b) setting boundaries around work to ensure we have the space and time to pursue meaningful pastimes. The former is a collective project that includes the demand for better wages, benefits, and stronger social safety nets. The latter is a project for each of us as individuals to protect our non-work time and do with it what makes us feel alive.

If we succeed, Jaffe envisions:

“…a world that actually cared about people …. one that gives everybody time and space to develop what gives them meaning, even if that’s gluing macaroni to a paper plate, if it is literally like making bad art like, great, I want you to have time to do that.”

The bigger picture

Whether or not we agree with Jaffe and Cech’s perspectives, I am more interested in the act of questioning our most commonly held notions about work.

The shared and personal experiences of 2020 challenged us to reconsider the role of work in our lives and present an opportunity to reimagine it. Collectively, we are discussing expanded paid family and parental leave, the viability of a 4-day workweek, the possibility of universal basic income and healthcare, and celebrating the first hint of wage growth that we’ve recorded in decades. Individually, we are saying “no” more often, we are demanding flex work, we are quitting jobs we don’t like at record rates, and we are asking ourselves what we want in our work and our lives.

As you ponder the meaning of work in your post-pandemic world, consider Professor Cech’s plea to “diversify our meaning-making portfolios.” She’s asking us to look beyond our traditional sources of purpose and consider the possibility for more. Whether it’s macaroni art or learning salsa dancing or building a world-famous troll hole, perhaps passion and meaning are waiting for you outside the cubicle.