Most meaningful work is sometimes unpaid, unsung
Acknowledging that you are what you eat might be one key to good health. Tweaking the phrase to “you are what you do” might clarify our understanding of what constitutes important work.
When I was in middle school, I thought about becoming a lawyer. My mother suggested studying dentistry instead but also favored accounting and dermatology.
In the intervening years, I have sold telecommunications systems to businesses, wrote for newspapers, assisted midwives during births, and taught college students. Each time I found a new answer to the question “What do you wanna be when you grow up?”
Mine hasn’t been the straight trajectory of the salaryman, the traditional path of many Japanese university graduates who spend their entire career from day one until retirement with a single corporation. Rather, I have grappled with job changes searching for important work.
As my daughter begins her last year of high school she has been thinking about her future. She plans to go on to college and wonders about what school to choose, what to study, and where that course of study will lead her in the world of work.
Americans often define themselves by their jobs. Introductions between adults quickly move on to learning each others’ line of work. Work takes up our waking hours and contributes mightily to our sense of self.
We work to earn enough to pay for the bills and the frills. Yet work fulfills more than one function. We work as our contribution to the world. It adds purpose to our lives.
Sometimes the most meaningful work is unpaid and unsung. When my children were small, almost all my labor went towards nonpaying jobs. I did some freelance writing and a lot more mothering.
There were meals to spoon into young mouths, diapers and errands. My days were punctuated by the departure and arrival of the school bus.
At the time my grandmother lived several miles away in an assisted living home. I visited regularly, usually trailing a child or two. We’d talk. She would pet the kids and feed them tiny packages of graham crackers. She spent four years there gradually growing more feeble in body but not in mind.
Towards the end of her time there, she had difficulty performing the basics of personal care. Her fingers were gnarled and stiff from arthritis. She walked, sat and rose from a chair only with great difficulty.
When I came I assisted her in the toilet and washed her hands and face afterwards. She was always grateful and profusely apologetic but her thanks were unnecessary. It was the most meaningful work I had ever done.
Some work is seen as undesirable. It might be repetitious or dirty. But the penalty of messy hands might be a harbinger of its significance.
Work can be well paid, poorly paid or unpaid. Its compensation isn’t proportional to its importance.
The full answer to those inevitable questions about the job we do is longer than just the corporate name printed on a pay stub. Unlike the Japanese salaryman, many of us grow by passing through a series of jobs and a series of definitions about what constitutes our most important efforts.
*The attached/referenced article was originally published in The Catholic Spirit, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Metuchen, and is protected under U.S. and international copyright law