I had a sort of vacation recently, a week or so out of the office in which I tried mightily not to do any work. I sat in coffee shops across Brooklyn, read books, scribbled notes, spilled my guts on a piece of paper or twelve and wondered why I was just struggling with vague anxiety the whole time.
Back at work this week, I felt my jangling nerves still, my muscles unlock, my body relax. See, work is more than what we do to pay the bills, sometimes. It’s what we do to make us feel human, too.
So it’s Labor Day here in the U.S. and I’m working anyway. I’m writing. Because that’s what I do, and as I noted to a friend a few days ago, sometimes me trying not to work is just trying to force myself into someone else’s idea of happiness.
So many of us do several kinds of work. We do the work that pays us (all too often not nearly enough), work that doesn’t sustain or fulfill us in any other way than the check that comes at the end of a long week. We put our bodies and minds through their paces, tiring ourselves out in part because the work we do gives us nothing back.
And for many of us, that work is done so that we can have spare time to do the work that does sustain us, that does fulfill us. To make art, to care for our families, to build relationships. To create, not products for purchase, but the things that make us human. Sometimes we do our other work in the hopes of someday making it our full-time jobs, but more often we just do it because we love it.
Sometimes I think the split is what kills us.
Of course the world is full of shitty things that need doing. I hate cooking and cleaning, but I have to do them every now and then. But no one should have to spend their entire life doing someone else’s shit work.
Talking to another friend recently, one of the millions of Americans on the job hunt after the recession’s continuing layoffs, I tried to remind her that she didn’t have to take a shitty job. Her response, of course, was that someone has to do them. I responded as I usually do, with some utopian blather about society realizing that if we all share the unpleasant work then no one has to do it all the time.
But for now, we don’t live in that world and my friend knows it and I know it. We live in a world instead where 8.4 million jobs disappeared in the shell game known as the financial crisis, the economic crisis, the recession, sometimes even a depression in the words of certain columnists. We live in a world where “productivity” and Wall Street incomes are up and in spite of this workers are squeezed harder than ever.
We make the bargain that we work for pay in order to have time and space to do the things we love. In return, all most of us ask is enough pay to cover the bills and have a few things on the side, and enough time left over to do those other things. We ask to be treated by those in charge the way they expect to be — and usually are — treated.
The last time the country saw this kind of economic crisis there was a vibrant, strong, militant labor movement and it’s because of those people and the ongoing struggle of their descendants that I’m not in the office today, that I’m writing this sitting on my bed at home, the dog next to me.
I’m lucky that I have a job or two that I love, it’s true. But it’s nothing more than what I want for everyone. I don’t want to be “lucky.” So many of us have heard the phrase “You’re lucky to have work” in this crisis, in others, in times of struggle. But those are words that keep us scrambling, not words that make us stronger. They single us out, tell us we’re different, create barriers to solidarity, to working together.
This Labor Day, I’m thinking about a world where everyone loves what they do enough to wake up in the morning and start to do it early because they can’t wait for the day. I’m thinking about a world where we share the unpleasant and the pleasant work among us and we all have time to make things, to love our friends and families. I’m thinking of a world in which our work is valued and we are valued because we’re human, not because we can put a dollar value on it.
Yes, I’m descending into vague utopian blather again, it’s true. But we’ll never see an alternative to the way we live now unless someone does that.
Anyway, labor unions have never stopped fighting for that kind of a world. Thank a union member today, and enjoy your holiday. And take a few minutes to think about the kind of work that sustains you.