It is very hard to say no to work. We may courageously resign, take a sabbatical, or retire to a simpler, more rustic existence, but then we are engaged in inner work, or working on ourselves, or just chopping wood. Work means application, explication, expectation. There is almost no life a human being can construct for themselves where they are not wrestling with something difficult, something that takes a modicum of work. The only possibility seems to be the ability of human beings to choose good work. At its simplest, good work is work that makes sense, and that grants sense and meaning to the one who is doing it and to those affected by it.
The stakes in good work are necessarily high. Our competence may be at stake in ordinary, unthinking work, but in good work that is a heartfelt expression of ourselves, we necessarily put our very identities to hazard. Perhaps it is because we know, in the end, we are our gift to others and the world. Failure in truly creative work is not some mechanical breakdown but the prospect of a failure in our very essence, a kind of living death. Little wonder we often choose the less vulnerable, more familiar approach, that places work mostly in terms of provision. If I can reduce my image of work to just a job I have to do, then I keep myself safely away from the losses to be endured in putting my heart’s desires at stake.
To view work as a pilgrimage is to put our hearts’ desires to hazard, because by merely setting out, we have told ourselves that there is something bigger and better, or even smaller and better above all, something more life giving that awaits us in our work, and we are going to seek it. We look around to see what we have for the journey and find at bottom that we possess only intuitions and imagination. We look for courage and as yet find little of it.
- Excerpt from Crossing the Unknown Sea; Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity, by David Whyte
Contemplation Questions
After reading the passage and letting it sink in, we invite you to take a few minutes to journal your answers to the following questions.
- What are you seeking in your work? What do you seek to learn? How do you seek to feel in your work?
- If you leave any end goals or financial targets out of it, what is the purpose of your work or the work you seek to do?
- If you don’t identify your work with this passage, what steps could you take to finding deeper meaning in your work?
