What is Wrong with Work?

The title says it all.

The moment we say I am going to work or I am at work today, or I just got off work, we start the mental classification of something we might loathe.

Work has deep roots in manual labor. Wage labor is defined as selling labor to an employer who buys it.

You do this for me and I will pay you this amount; a bartering of effort for wages.

1>Sometimes it’s good. You have a great talent for doing something you like and an employer is willing to pay a lot to have you on his team. This might be the result of following a passion and developing exactly the role you picture for yourself.

2>Sometimes you don’t really have an above minimum wage marketable talent but you talk your way into a job you can do. This means that regardless of your great personality, you are trading your hours for pay. A few generations ago, this would have been manual labor. That was real work. Now you are just mentally captive.

How do we get on the path to get the first type of job?

We make decisions early in life and they may have a big impact. Sometimes we have no choice without big consequences or confrontations. We decide to follow the path urged by our mentors to paint inside the lines, not rock the boat, and do as everyone says.

This leads to college, a major, and then graduation to competing with everyone just like us for real cookie cutter positions that businesses need to run their operations. Oh yes, human resources is a valuable facet of corporate life and pays well, but you can predict where it leads.

On the other hand, you decide early you don’t fit the cookie cutter mentality. You see the path but you have a wild streak, a maverick mentality, an I don’t care what you think attitude, a I can do something better than anyone outlook. You decide to deviate from the path and damn the torpedos you are going to do what you like. Your parents may have said they don’t know what to do with you.

Or at some point you are inspired by something that feels like your soul mate. We know people that have cooking in their blood; that love computers and gaming, that love a sport, that love to build, or that want to make T-Shirts.

Some people just want to be in business for themselves and will find a way to do it.

It’s the mentality of safety that makes the difference. People who need safety are most likely the people going to work. People who are willing to pit their will against the world for the risk of not surviving are not going to work.

People who are engaged in something that inspires them, put in more hours than people who go to work, but the inspired don’t see it as work; it’s the labor of love not the labor for money..

There is a big gamble to do something you love. You will work longer hours, you don’t have a guarantee of survival or of any income, you may not have any work benefits, and there is no safety net.

Yet, you have freedom of hours, you don’t have to answer to the machine, and you get to keep the glory and income of your production.

On the other hand when you go to work, someone else is probably deciding what the customers want and how to market to them and produce what is necessary and collect the money due.

When you work on your own you may have to fulfill all the functions. You may have to determine the market, how to produce, how to sell, how to ship, how to collect, and how to grow the enterprise. And yet these people may not consider this work.

These people are expressing themselves because they have the desire to know who they are and what they can achieve all on their own. They recognize that humans have an unlimited ability to take on responsibility, plan, produce and enjoy. This energy has more primitive roots from when man was more self reliant and self sufficient.

The modern society has created the safety net, but there is a trade off or a price to pay.