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Copyright Monocle Magazine

I’ve taken a break from blogging for the past two months. I wanted to take some time to re-evaluate my job search, start to consider alternative career paths and just spend some time enjoying everyday life again. This period has been refreshing and lifted my spirits.

While on my blog sabbatical, I began reading one of my favorite authors. Alain de Botton’s newest book, “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work” is a great read. Botton’s writing is always eloquent, crisp and succinct. Since reading his book “Status Anxiety” in 2005, he’s remained at the top of my must-have reading list. Botton’s writing contains nested and looping phrases. One might say it is very British. Read him slowly and savor his construction of language, his precise descriptions and digest what he writes. He is a wonderful philosopher who writes in accessible language despite the analytical thoughts expressed.

In our working lives, we draw much of our self-worth and sense of self-actualization from what we do. The author cites work as having an “…extraordinary claim to be able to provide us, alongside love, with the principal source of life’s meaning.”

Our culture especially prizes high-paying jobs because we equate salary with achievement. Even in this time of economic transformation, the old standards are slow to ebb away. Many of us are committed to obligations based on the old assumptions, though, that make it difficult to give up the paradigms we’re accustomed to. This doesn’t mean that we cannot opt out and try a new course that’s held our interest.

Botton describes the different types of work that are done – with pleasure – by people throughout economies around the world. It turns out that there is, after all, reward and honor in doing the most innocuous occupations. Perhaps the author glosses over the soul-grinding aspects of some labors that truly demean us but just the same he uncovers what propels people forward in what they do.

This blog entry highlights some particular points he makes, points that I found poignant and examples of beautiful writing. I will post additional entries as I finish the remaining chapters.

In chapter four on career counseling, Botton shadows a British career counselor. The man works for himself, and is hired by individuals seeking to determine what’s suitable for their lives, their interests and how to attain fulfillment from them.

In summing up how we ache for stellar achievement as a means to validate ourselves, he writes:

“Most of (us) stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or a bicycle.”

The ache for achievement has a gnawing potency on our psyches. It’s comparable to the persistent dream of winning the lottery. Oh, the things we’d do, the ways we’d help others, the comforts we could acquire. Nevermind there’s 1:200,000 odds usually. The dream is comforting and in it we numb ourselves for a little while from the reality of instability, need and not knowing what comes next. Meeting one’s potential is in large part dependent on the action one takes to make it happen. Without that key part, which I interpret as “advantages”, we remain the grounded airplane waiting to soar.

“For the rest of history, for most of us, our bright promise will always fall short of being actualized; it will never earn us bountiful sums of money or beget exemplary objects or organizations. It will remain no more than a hope carried over from childhood, or a dream entertained as we drive along the motorway and feel our plans hover above a wide horizon. Extraordinary resilience, intelligence and good fortune are needed to redraw the map of our reality, while on either side of the summits of greatness are arrayed the endless foothills populated by the tortured celibates of achievement.”

Those who climb the summit to greatness are surrounded by people tortured by knowing they have not climbed the summit, who clearly see where success lies but cannot climb.

“All societies have had work at their centre; ours is the first to suggest that it could be something much more than a punishment or a penance. Ours is the first to imply that we should seek to work even in the absence of a financial imperative. Our choice of occupation is held to define our identity to the extent that the most insistent question we ask of new acquaintances is not where they come from or who theirs were but what they do, the assumption being that the route to a meaningful existence must invariably pass through the gate of remunerative employment.”

For us, work defines who we are and our worth to our friends and family. We conceive of work as an endeavor deeper than one of necessity. Our basic needs are easily met. We do not have to bake our own bread; sow our own crops; and tend our own animals for survival. Nor do we weave our own clothing, construct our own homes or make much of anything by hand. Instead, we use our minds to pursue meaning by which we also supply our needs and indulge our comforts. Given the Great Correction of our present lives, though, it’s time to solve these problems with a new approach.

A Word On The Edition
The edition I’m reading is published by Monocle magazine (I liken it to The Economist meets Vogue in conjunction with the author. It is a very handsome cloth-bound limited edition signed by the author that includes a DVD discussing the book’s topics. There is also a video podcast on Monocle’s web site where the author and the magazine’s editor, Tyler Brule, (also a hero of mine), interviews Botton.