Loving Your Job

Here's part 6 of the Love series I wrote for the Straits times. Don't forget, if you enjoy it, please register as a 'follower' of this blog.

LOVE 06: Loving Your Job

They sat down to do a job and they performed it like chimpanzees. Nothing personal in it. (Robert Persig, from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)

This is the sixth in a series of articles about love. So far I’ve discussed romantic love (part 1), friendship (parts 3-5) and love for ‘the sub-human’ (part 2). This week’s topic is, loving your job.

It’s a fine thing to love your job. No-one doubts that. We all dream of a career that provides not just an income, but also enjoyment and a sense of accomplishment. But is it realistic? For most of us, isn’t work just an unpleasant fact of life?

I will try to answer these questions by considering two episodes from Robert Persig’s 1974 book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZMM).

ZMM is an autobiographical novel. It describes a 17-day motorcycle journey across the United States, undertaken by an unnamed Narrator, his eleven year old son Chris, and a married couple named John and Sylvia. The book has sold millions of copies worldwide, and has been described as ‘the most widely read philosophy book, ever.’

Monday-morning blues

Early on in the novel, the four riders pull into a roadside picnic area to stretch their legs. Sylvia appears gloomy. The Narrator comments on it, and she tells him: “It was all those people in the cars coming the other way… The first one looked so sad. And then the next one looked exactly the same way, and then the next one and the next one…”

The Narrator points out that they were just commuting to work. “Well, you know, he says, “… work. Monday morning. Half asleep. Who goes to work Monday morning with a grin?”

And there’s little else to say. Work is work. Monday morning is Monday morning. It’s a fact of life.

Chimpanzee mechanics

Later in the book, the Narrator thinks back to a time when his motorcycle engine seized up on him and he took it to a repair-shop: “The mechanics… looked like children. A radio was going full blast and they were clowning around and talking and seemed not to notice me. When one of them finally came over he barely listened to the piston slap before saying, ‘Oh yeah. Tappets.’”

Months later, after a series of expensive, botched and unnecessary repair jobs, the Narrator took his motorcycle away and repaired it himself – by replacing a 25-cent pin.

He asks himself why those mechanics butchered his motorcycle the way they did, and thinks back to the repair-shop:

[The] biggest clue seemed to be their expressions. They were hard to explain. Good-natured, friendly, easygoing – and uninvolved. They were like spectators… There was no identification with the job. No saying, “I am a mechanic.”

Investing love

These incidents are very revealing. They tell us a lot about work, and about how we approach our jobs. Like those sad-faced commuters we all have to work, and it’s not always fun. Everyone gets the Monday-morning blues.

But the problem becomes compounded if, like those mechanics, you let yourself become detached from your job. If you cease to be involved with it. If there’s nothing personal about it.

The French philosopher André Comte-Sponville says, “Our lives – private and public, domestic and professional – have value only in proportion to the love we invest in them and find in them.”

The way to find value in your job is to invest love in it.

Cleaning toilets

Here in the UK, the job of toilet-attendant is not very highly thought of. Some people would rather live on benefits than clean toilets. It’s certainly not the kind of job you imagine anyone putting their heart and soul into.

Some time ago, my wife Wendy and I toured Scotland. On our way to the Isle of Skye we stopped at the Kyle of Lochalsh and used the public toilets. It was a memorable experience.

The toilet-attendant, Willie Jack, obviously took great pride in his job. He kept the facilities immaculately clean, and had decorated them with Scottish-themed souvenirs and trinkets. He’d named each cubicle after a Scots clan, and put self-penned Scottish poems around the walls.

He’d even gone to the trouble of collecting and freezing wild heather so he could decorate his loos with fresh-looking sprigs all year round.

Willie (now sadly retired) won the Scottish Loo of the Year Award many times. He appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines, and was regularly asked to pose for photos with foreign tourists. He turned a ‘dead-end’ job into an art - and a source of pride.

Conclusion

I’m not suggesting that every job is - or can be made - loveable. Some people work long hours at arduous jobs, and earn poor wages from unappreciative employers. I wouldn’t presume to lecture them about job-satisfaction.

But for many of us, the simplest way to get more out of our jobs is to put more of ourselves into them.