617: Why Do We Work So Hard Just To Die?

“If one wanted to crush and destroy a man entirely, to mete out to him the most terrible punishment,” wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky, “all one would have to do would be to make him do work that was completely and utterly devoid of usefulness and meaning.” Peter Segars wrote the sequence to one of the great wisdom lyrics in the history of folk rock in the late 1950s that would be recorded by The Byrds in 1965 and popularized as the theme music in Forest Gump, The Simpsons, and The Wonder Years. Some have called Turn, Turn, Turn a number one hit with the oldest lyrics.  Segars adapted the majority of the lyrics from the wisdom literature of the Jewish King Solomon’s writings in the Old Testament book Ecclesiastes. The Segars rendition ends just shy of Solomon’s powerful sequence that helps us understand the motive and the value of work. John Mark Comer in his well-reflected book Garden City says of our modern (primarily Western culture), “The American dream - which started out as this brilliant idea that everybody should have a shot at a happy life - has devolved over the years into a narcissistic desire to make as much money as possible, in as little time as possible, with as little effort as possible, so that we can get off work and go do something else.” Kenny Chesney popularized a culturally Brazilian story about the fisherman and the businessman in his song The Life showing the contrast between a simple, humble fisherman’s idea of success - catch enough to live that day - and the scale-at-all-costs ambition of a savvy businessman who has the roadmap to create a world-dominating fishing empire, all so we can entice his humble fisherman friend to… do exactly what he is doing today, except with far more effort and stress. We have twisted work as something equivalent to a modern curse on our humanity, something that we can widdle down to maybe 4 hours per week so that we can get on with the true desire of our hearts…leisure.   Solomon, regarded as the wisest person to ever live, said this of work, “There is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in his labor - this is God’s gift to man.” (Ecclesiastes 3:13)  Have we walked astray from the original design for work?  Is work really a gift? Work is a gift.  A gift is “a thing given willingly without payment”, and also something to be enjoyed.   Imagine waking up in a position where you are simply unable to work, to move, to think, to respond, to react.  We have some in our society who have not been given the capability to enjoy the gift of work.   Their days are spent in a relentless cycle of managing indifference, wondering why they have been stripped of the gift of working, and only dreaming of the contribution they could make through the gift of work.   We were created to work.  Of the world’s major monotheistic religions, there is a collective alignment that points back to an original woman and a man standing in their primitive office - a garden - tending, trimming, sowing, and harvesting…working. The Jewish have a cultural phrase Tikkun Olam, “the repair of the world”.  Work is an active, productive, skill-leveraging way to be in a constant state of repairing our broken world.   Work builds relationships and brings value to ourselves and others. The Anglican theologian John Stott says that work is  “the expenditure of energy in the service of others, which brings fulfillment to the worker, benefit to the community, and glory to God.” New York City pastor Tim Keller describes work as “rearranging the raw materials of God’s creation in such a way that it helps the world in general, and people in particular thrive and flourish.” There is a storied tale that was shared in middle eastern Jewish history of a shrewd manager who had just been sacked by his owner.  The manager has one final task of employment; to go settle up any outstanding accounts on behalf of the owner.  The shrewd manager begins slashing payments as a way to win favor with the customers, and shoring up relationships…building bridges using discounts and favors. At the end of the story, we are instructed, “use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends.” It is a wild story and one I thought would end with a rebuff of the manager.   Put more subtly, author Dan Miller says of the benefits of business and money, “I love having the opportunities that business provides, but I want to be a vehicle for being, for deep meaningful relationships, not just doing.” For many, the reason we don’t feel a sense of success in our work is because our definition of success is elusive.   Solomon, a man who had far more than you or I will ever have, said this of confusing money with success, “Don’t wear yourself out trying to get rich; restrain yourself!  Riches disappear in the blink of an eye; wealth sprouts wings and flies off into the wild blue yonder.” We have a success problem because we have allowed the eyes of accumulation to define the success of our life.  Metrics have become our barometer while our relationships and connections starve. You know what the fisherman does everyday after he fishes throughout the morning?  The tale continues like this, “(I) play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I join my buddies in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.” Even the fisherman had a schedule.   Annie Dillard, the American writer saw the value of a schedule in relation to a valuable life, “A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being;” A schedule, then elevates work allowing it to exist more for relationships than for things.  When things and money are prioritized over relationships, then our definition of success is upside down.   We have redefined the terms of success prioritizing the aimlessness of more; specifically more money and more things. How should we define success in our work?  We can start by asking this question, “who have I been created to be?”  Each of us has been designed, created, and offered to the society around us as a creator.  What have you been created to create? Think through the filters of skill, temperament, personality, what gives you energy, and what depletes you of energy. Dillard, a religious none (as detailed on her website) says wisely, “how we spend our days is how we spend our lives.” Work is a valuable way to spend our lives when that work positions us to do what New York Times columnist Arthur C. Brooks lays out with thoughtful simplicity… Use things, Love People,  Worship The Divine. Start reordering the verbs and work becomes misery. As you listen to this, how can you shift your mindset, and your success definition to create meaning in a work worth doing?  Will you work till you die?  Or will you intentionally shift your mindset to begin working towards an end filled with usefulness and meaning that creates the “cabinet of fortitude” (Arthur Brooks) needed adding value to our collective society?