Whistle while you work

“Of course it’s no fun, that’s why is it called work!” These are words I’ve been told, and I have to admit that I’ve told employees and my children, on various occasions.

Somehow, somewhere, someone decided that doing something important is called “work.” This imaginary someone also decided that if you enjoy doing something, it isn’t really work. And if an action isn’t work, then it’s “play.” Therefore “play” isn’t important.

Logically, that makes sense, if you believe in the first assumption.

Which I don’t.

Who is to say that you can’t enjoy doing something important? To me, there are two over-generalized categories of an important action: doing something for yourself and doing something for others.

Granted, the lines between the two are blurry, but hang with me for a moment. I consider doing something important for yourself is an action that will bring you income or the means to support your ability to live. Whether you grow and harvest your own food, or buy it from someone else, you still need to eat. That’s important.

Doing something important for others includes providing the means to live either through your actions of doing something important for yourself (like earning more money than you need and giving it to others) or performing actions to help others for what is important in their lives—also known as service.

I, personally, have found immense enjoyment from doing service. I think if you ask most people who volunteer their time to help others, you’ll hear them say the same thing: “It’s not easy, but it’s very rewarding.” I dare say that those who truly enjoy it, don’t get that enjoyment only after the service is done—they experience it while serving.

Which brings me back to my main point. I believe there are those who feel like their employment has to be a miserable experience because after all, it’s work. Yet once in a while, you find someone who truly loves what they do for a living.
 

 

People call them “lucky.” I call them people who weren’t willing to accept that work couldn’t be enjoyable and therefore found something that they enjoyed doing which also allowed them to make a living—even if that job wasn’t understood by others or frowned upon the “responsible” people in the world who have bought into the lie that work can’t be fun.