At a family event earlier this week, I asked eight members of my extended family if they liked their work. Six people did not like their work. Some hated their jobs. Some were just ready for something new, and some were actively looking for new jobs but only something they’d enjoy and were struggling to find anything that they thought they’d enjoy. One had weeks to go before retiring at age sixty. Rather than go to sixty-five, he decided to get out early. His young-ish retirement added risk to whether his savings would last but he was willing to accept that risk. He couldn’t take his work anymore. The youngest participant in the conversation was thirty, so it wasn’t workplace veterans vs workplace newbies. It was across the ages.
I wondered: Is this typical? Does seventy five percent of the workforce dislike their work, and some so much that they will accept more risk in their retirement to bug out early?
These questions led me back to some notes I took while listening to a podcast a while ago. Ezra Klein interviewed the author, whose name I didn’t write down, and the author said some fascinating things:
First – Our society continues to create conditions that are at odds with human flourishing, and, per this guy, we know this! Yet we continue to do it. So, I thought, are jobs that are being offered and created today at odds with flourishing? What would a job that facilitated human flourishing look like? Is it even possible? Do I know anyone that has one?
Second – Few people know what they want. Only that they don’t want “this”, whatever this is. They don’t want the work they have, only that there must be something better. But what? Most people have no idea.
Third – We have a good idea of what a good life should look like and be, BUT we seldom pursue it. And, he said, we train our kids to not pursue it.
Third – Our desires today DON’T lead to flourishing. They lead to loneliness. Ask yourself - what are your desires? And be honest! Will getting them help you flourish or make you lonely? Or lonelier?
Finally, the author said there are three things that lead to flourishing: Education, Religion and Art. Not spirituality. Religion. And there are less of all these things today. Less practice of them. Less study of them. Less pursuit of them. Less pushing our kids toward them. And yet, per the author, they are, and always have been, the keys to happiness.
What does it mean that we know the solutions to our unhappiness problems and ignore them. What does it mean that those in influencer positions in our workplace could create elements of jobs that would make others be happier? But we instead follow, and participate in, and help create and push our kids into, a culture that ignores the answers? Has a society ever had known solutions to known problems and simply ignored them?
I’m wrestling with this. It's tough. How do we get off this wheel?
I’m Cam Marston, and I’m just trying to keep it real.
