Work.

Work. Some crave it, others despise it. Some need it, others drown in it. For the moment, many can’t find it. Some people say they thrive on the ‘high’ of a stressful office-lifestyle. To each's own.

However, what can seem like the most mundane chore to an outsider, can be a core-factor in a daily routine for someone.A source of confirmation that we're still useful to society, even if that society is limited to our own household.

Whether we like it or not, in our current day and age, work gives a certain (illusion of) safety. People like routines. They like something to hang on to, something that’ll be there every day. Ironically enough, at times it’s often those very routines that end up tying one down and becoming the main obstacle for personal development.

Work is a malevolent goddess, made impossibly conceited by Unlimited and untempered flattery. She does not even make any effort to attract new lovers, knowing that no matter how insolent and indifferent she is to them, they will cast themselves on her sacrificial pyre unasked.
It may not mean much to her who has everything she could want already, but I am vain enough to hope that she is nettled when, strolling unsouciantly through her temple, I raise my eyebrows in amused contempt as I look at her marble eyelids, and walking with a slight swagger, feeling her hostile eyes boring through my back, I saunter gracefully out of the dim, reeking temple.

Everett Ruess – letters 1933 to Fritz Loeffler – in ‘A vagabond for Beauty’.

It’s clear that Everett Ruess doesn’t like work. He says not to have the proper constitution nor stamina for it, and doesn’t care for it. You might say he looks down upon those who do ‘cast themselves upon her pyre’.

Joseph Conrad wrote in Heart of Darkness: ‘I don’t like work, but I like what’s in the work: a chance to redeem yourself.’

It’s true. Work does bring a sort of piece of mind at times. Mind you, I’m talking about (physical) labour, not a 9 to 5er in an office. There should be a clear distinction between work in the original sense of the word, and work in the sense 20th century society has given it.

I can’t say I completely agree with Ruess, however. Work has its values. To me, work can be a means to an end, but I do believe it should stop there. Personal work however - education, a life’s work, artistic expression, constructing a home for your loved ones – should only stop when you feel it should.

But few things feel as right as reaping certain rewards work might offer.

‘Work is a blessing when it helps us to think about what we’re doing, but it becomes a curse when its sole use is to stop us thinking about the meaning of our life.’ - Coelho

A possibility for change always needs energy and friction.

Let’s see work as a way to personal enrichment, but let’s not have it in cash-value, for a change.