Love Isn't A Luxury

Admire the Nobel Peace Prize winner for their impact on the world. Instead, seek your path of least resistance to that same outcome. Each represents a different route on a similar journey. So, yes, admire the painter for how they open up your world. Admire the comedian for how they make you laugh. Admire the singer for how they move you. Finally, remember the massive extent of your uniqueness. Five thousand Milky Ways. No one compares with you, and no one ever will. Your pattern of connections, insights, instincts, loves, and loathes is unmatched and unmatchable. This doesn’t make you better than anyone else. It just makes any comparison of you with anyone else a failure of imagination.

A Great Day For Freedom

He will tell you that your entire quest is a waste of time. That most jobs just suck, are to be endured not enjoyed, and that what you need to do is take a deep breath when you go to work, do your job, and then come home. Reserve love for your friends and family. I first came upon this devil during my research into the talents of the world’s best housekeepers. What is it with you and housekeepers? a Wharton professor asked me back then. Apparently, they fascinate you. Apparently, they do. I think the reason I’m so intrigued by them is that theirs is one of those jobs that we condescend to. Anyone can do that job, we think to ourselves, and if we were unlucky enough to have to do it, we would count the days until we could get ourselves promoted out of it. And yet here I was interviewing the ten best housekeepers at Walt Disney World, and to hear them tell it, it was interesting, challenging work that they loved. What do you love about it? I asked them. I love vacuuming myself backward out of each room.

That Which We Have Lost

Taking the mess of a room and turning it into perfectly straight vacuum lines. There’s so much to do, getting the carts filled up just right, everyone moving so fast. Making a show for our guests. To hear them tell it, not only was this a hard job to excel at, but if you did excel, it was the kind of work that they would not want to get themselves promoted out of. A number of them had been offered the chance to move into a supervisory role and had turned it down. These outstanding housekeepers gave the lie to the view that finding love in your work is a luxury, one most of us can’t afford. The view that work is called work for a reason. That you should not define yourself or try to find yourself through your work. That you are not your work. Listen, you don’t live there. And about how, if we were going to coerce people to do housecleaning or manufacturing jobs, then we should pay them a heck of a lot more to suffer through this loveless work. Listening to those housekeepers describe their work, they made it sound exciting and intriguing and chock full of variety.

Another Part Of Me

Whereas Barbara’s description of the very same job sounded horrific. Same with the housekeeping job. Or rather, they all are. Each of us finds love in different activities, people, situations, and outcomes. Just because you hate a certain job doesn’t make it hateful to everyone. Or, turning that around, we shouldn’t assume anyone performing a job excellently must find love in all aspects of it. In any job, sustained excellence without love is impossible. Love isn’t a luxury. If, for example, a company creates warehouse roles with little space for exercising judgment or even taking bathroom breaks, then no matter how many mental games the workers play to try to get through the day, they will always be just getting through the day, enduring the work rather than contributing what they love. Or if teachers are given so few financial resources they can’t even buy supplies for their class, and so many students they can’t pay attention to each one, it’s hard to see how they could find love in this overstretched, underfunded world. Back when I was interviewing those Walt Disney World housekeepers, the irony wasn’t lost on me that, though the best ones lay on the bed and turned on the ceiling fan because this is the first thing a guest does after a long day at the park, their formal job description actually forbade them from lying on the bed. Those housekeepers who arranged the kids’ toys in a different little scene each day? They were breaking the regulation to not touch more of the guest’s possessions than is necessary to clean the room. As far as we can, it’s up to us to try to persuade our leaders that this is wrong. That if we can define jobs through the lens of those who love them then higher performance, higher quality, and less burnout are the happy result. Love isn’t a feeling. It is a source of energy, and like all energy sources, it must flow. For you, for me, for all of us, a healthy life isn’t one where we find balance. I’ve got everything just so! This means to live happily and fully, you have to express your loves. Yes, they spring from within you, but then they demand expression. You’ve got to get them out somewhere, somehow, turn them from loves into actions, from passions into contributions. And when you do, your life feels coherent and authentic, and you know, you just know, in every fiber of your being, that you are on your path. The inverse is also true, though. It might feel to you like frustration. It might feel like anger, or depression, or confusion. You sitting on the couch crying to yourself and not knowing why. In quiet moments you ask yourself, Where did I go? What’s wrong with me? I don’t think I recognize me anymore. I don’t think I like me anymore.