On the question of what work matters, whether work that matters even matters, and pining for room to savor and reflect during the holidays
Dear Sarah,
Happy holiday week and birthday week! I’m on a break, away from work and away from home, and my head is in a different space. (How many times have I started my letter this way? From here on out, please take as a given: This week my head is in a different space, different from last week, different from day to day. Similar trains of thought, presented in different hues and shades, with new combinations where new experience meets memory.)
I’ve been thinking a lot about your letter from last week and our ongoing thoughts about small, steady progress, chipping away at something larger, plus the question of Who are you without the doing — and my thoughts now are on the idea of how to make progress toward something that matters. (Flash back to my early science classes and a teacher who would ask, Whatsa matter? To which we learned to reply Anything that takes up space and has mass — which left me with a broad base from which to contemplate what it means for anything to matter at all.) Is it possible to objectively determine what matters? Thinking about your letter and The Progress Principle — I’m stuck on the difference between two examples: employee motivation and wellbeing correlating with the idea that one might be making steady progress toward clearly defined goals, and the story of Jonah practicing the piano.
When I think about work (broadly defined) and life, I think it is important to pursue some goal(s) that matter to a person, to me, to you. And I think there are ways in which we’re crossing our moments of meaning, trying to force our paid work to do all the work of both meaning and of income generation in our lives. Our paid work is often 40 hours a week (or more) — the bulk of our waking hours — and we’re trying to make a living and make meaning with our lives, all at the same time. And I think it’s not all that common or guaranteed that what makes money is also what makes meaning. The concept of a career is manufactured, 40 hours a week spent in paying work is manufactured, as is a life and society built around a 40-hour job and the things that 40 hours can buy. If you break any part of the equation, how do you feel about the rest? If one doesn’t need to buy things that cost 40 hours of work, would one be more or less comfortable making widgets?
But learning a song on the piano — practicing a longer piece bit by bit by breaking it into smaller pieces, then reassembling it all together — to me that has meaning, and it is personal meaning, and it’s not money-making-meaning (though if you are accomplished enough at playing music it can certainly become a money-making endeavor, but then do your goals become muddied and knotted again?). Could we agree that the works of authors, artists, architects, scientists, musicians — these non-comprehensive labels for idea-makers and embodiments of the best of the human spirit — have some significant meaning, are perhaps less meaningless than the rest of it all? (And what happens when these works are made for pay, and when they’re not?)
What seems real is stretching oneself in some way that matters personally. When we know we need money to survive, do we talk ourselves into believing that our work has meaning because we are pursuing clearly defined goals? Do we feel compelled to roll meaning into our money-making? To have meaning with your money feels like the new covetable thing, and we will go to great lengths to manufacture meaning as we pursue our money. I think what I’m saying is that I don’t think pursuing any old company’s goal is equivalent to practicing an instrument and performing a song. I don’t think everything matters — and I think that is okay — but I am fascinated by the stories we will tell to make it seem as if it all does.
I’m still stewing on it all and talking through some ideas here and with myself before I bring them to you, so I’ll leave it there for now, and say happy new year to you!
Your friend,
Eva
December 27, 2018
Dear Eva,
Tonight I have spent several minutes staring at the blinking cursor on the blank page. Here, in week 13, is the first experience I have had with anything resembling writer’s block during this project. I cannot put my finger on why I am struggling to find a lucid thread to put into words on the page. It has been a lovely week of holiday gatherings with friends and family, though peppered with one sleepless night with a sick child. Today we packed up the car and drove to Chicago, a pitstop on our way to the next round of Christmas festivities for Bill’s side of the family.
I think maybe I feel a tiny bit of longing during the holidays in recent years. I miss the way this time of year used to feel to me, not just as a child but even as a young adult. It always felt a little magical, the way the days and nights were packed with so many of the things I most love in life – laughter with loved ones, rituals and song, and good food. I struggle to recreate that feeling in recent years. It always feels a little rushed and, though I hate to say it, a bit like a chore. I want to take all of the wonderful things about the holidays and just stretch them out and sprinkle them over the course of the year. I guess I just want to find a little space amidst it all.
I suppose it’s precisely that lack of space during this week that has made it hard for me to write this letter. Without a little padding around the edges of the day’s activities, I have a much harder time finding an opening to write. And I don’t mean in the sense of not having physical time.
This makes me think back to some of the things you have written about listening to our bodies. I was comforted by what you said recently about how sometimes the buckets of time where things feel emotionally overwhelming can actually be solved by something as simple as a small snack. It makes me wonder if my brain’s inability to tap anything resembling creative energy today is just my body telling me I am not giving it what it needs. A pause. A deep breath. A quiet walk. Maybe that is all it would take to make what feels empty suddenly feel full again. I like the promise in that thought.
So with that, I will close this short letter on my 39th birthday. Tomorrow, when we arrive in Michigan, I will take a walk.
Until next week,
Sarah