Work & life

Work is Life.

Doing work is the antithesis of having a job, the latter of which is to make money, a necessary part of staying alive. Work is what we engage in that adds understanding and value to our existence, a vital element of being alive. Work is what we do as we strive for happiness, contentment, engagement, connection, meaning and purpose.

On the online Merrian-Webster Dictionary, there are 59 definitions of, and for, work - as transitive and intransitive verbs, as nouns, as adjectives - and only one directly refers to it as something that is done for financial compensation.

We work on our relationships, we work to get better at our hobbies and interests, we work to become fitter through exercise, we work to become better versions of ourselves through thinking, learning, doing and so on. We work to get better, do better, be better. Work is action, any action that propels us further and deeper into our communities, our relationships and ourselves. To work is to be alive. And if we are lucky enough to be compensated for it, well, isn’t that something to be grateful for?

Life is Love.

A good life is a life lived with, and through, love. Love is the fountainhead from which all other things flow: peace, understanding, connections, justice, joy, tolerance, appreciation, gratitude…It has been said that love is also the source of the ugly: hate, exclusion, anger, conflict, self-interest…

Therein lies the understanding of life and people. There is an absence of binary purpose, binary function or outcomes. Individuals are not one thing or another, we each have many sides to us. Life is not one thing or another, many contradictory things happen, often at the same time.

It is in the seeming contradictions that life (and the individual) is rich, layered, and interesting. It speaks to movement, to change, to growth. Think of characters in all forms of literature; an uninteresting story is one in which the characters and their situations are one dimensional and where there is an absence of conflict, either with themselves, or their context.

Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey is the journey of life of each and everyone of us; as well as the journey of Life itself. It is in the action, in acting, in movement forward (physical or mental) that we emerge grown, renewed, with a better understanding of ourselves. It is not a one-off trip, but a series of journeys we take until we are stopped by Death himself.

“Help me say what work and life means to me.”