What if, instead of believing we must change the world,
we were taught from the start to let the world change and awe us?
I was raised with unclear and contradictory understandings of ‘work’ – the weight it should carry, the amount of space I should allow for it in my life, and whether I should live for it or let it live for me (big difference there, right?). On the one hand, there was an attempt, even sometimes verbalized, that work was just that: work. “A job is a job is a job,” was the message proclaimed. But on the other hand, the devotion adults around me showed to their business and professional lives spoke louder than any other messages they might’ve tried to pass on. And I’m no expert at this at all, but if I had to guess, kids learn much more from the actions they see than from the sermons they hear.
Are you with me?
In the household of my childhood/adolescence, work was held as an identity marker; a critical dimension of what defined me. And I absorbed that. I absorbed it into a place so deep that it has taken me 30+ years to realize that, 1) I’ve spent most of my life to this point going off someone else’s view on the dialogue between life and work, which inextricably speaks to how I must spent my time, and that 2) I can, as an adult and my own person, re-imagine a healthier view of work – or one that honors my values now that I know what my values are.
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