What does work mean?

One of my favorite people at work recently decided to leave us. She was feeling like her job was becoming more of a grind and less of a passion, so it was time to move on. She has no concrete plan nor is she seeking another job immediately. She's going to take some time to decompress and then make moves to find her next adventure. Her brave ability to follow her heart is inspiring and definitely has made me think critically about what I do to sustain myself every day.

I'm very lucky that I work for a great company doing a job that I am actually passionate about and enjoy doing. But even the most enjoyable job has its downsides, and the ones in my job make it feel like it's not entirely what I want to be doing with my life every day. How do we continue doing the same job every day without becoming jaded or exhausted? Does the perfect job exist of which you will never tire?

This article, "Buddhist Economics" by E. F. Schumacher got passed around work recently and it has some really enlightening ideas. This paragraph in particular struck me:

The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure.

I love the idea that work has a purpose far beyond satisfying the worker's monetary needs. That work is an opportunity to connect with others through being a team seems so obvious, but the value of that connection and collaboration is highly underrated (or perhaps better put as "ignored?") by both workers and employers.

I can imagine working for a group of people that divvies up work and designs position for maximum fulfillment instead of maximum monetary efficiency. I would be very interested to compare organizations that work along these two paradigms and see if there is any long-term financial disadvantage to the more "Buddhist" approach. I'd hypothesize that whatever short-term monetary inefficiencies occur would be made up for in increased creativity, productivity, cross-departmental communication and collaboration, and company loyalty.

I also love the idea that working hard is honorable and important, and in the spirit of duality, gives real meaning to leisure time too.

What is the perfect job? One that leaves you enough freedom and time for leisure and self-directed explorations whilst allowing you to work hard along side other people building something you are passionate about. Or at least, that's what I'd start with.

I'll end with this little guy who visited me in the garden today. Adorable!