Changing the world forever for better

THE 3 KINDS OF WORK
by Eric Chaet

I guess if you started listing all the kinds of work, you’d still be listing at the moment of your death. But I think work can be usefully divided into 3 categories.

1. SURVIVAL. Either you, or someone who cares for you emotionally, or because you pay them to do it, must provide you with water, nutrients and calories (just enough for current energy expenditures), shelter, sanitation, food, comfort when you are distressed, safety. This kind of work must be done from the moment of your birth, until the moment of your death. Probably you will do most of it, and probably there will be times when it is overwhelmingly oppressive, when you reach the limit of your current ability to endure the repetitive chores, and life feels like a meaningless grind. You have to rally, or you will collapse.
2. EFFORTS TO EMERGE from mere survival chores. While you keep up with your chores (or collapse), you organize your thoughts (which isn’t easy!), gather whatever equipment you seem to need most that you can afford, and learn to use it, barely at first, then more skillfully. You learn to do work that others will pay you for, and you have to find those others and sell your services to them. That way you have money to pay people to do some of your survival work for you. Trial and error, finding reliable help and coming to terms with them, is work, too.

You budget resources, and schedule your time. You manage, become efficient, choose this tool, machine, procedure, not that tool, machine, procedure — and develop skills. You learn from mistakes — if you don’t die of them. You develop a fitness regimen, and follow through, though often you’d rather not. As obstacles emerge, and as you develop, and as there are results, you adjust budget, schedule, regimen, attitude. You are CEO of yourself — succeed or fail!

Mostly, you’re not getting paid — you are preparing to earn, or developing capacities that eliminate the need for you to hire this or that person or company or corporation to do work for you that you can do for yourself, or do without — so you have less need of money. You learn to resist buying what you’re better off not buying.

This second sort of work takes up most (or all) of your mature life. If you are relatively lucky and wise, this sort of work blends with the third kind of work, while it also blends with mere survival, the first kind of work, which doesn’t end until you die.

If you are relatively lucky and wise, you won’t work at this second kind of work miserably, but will be relatively cheerful about it, taking some pleasure in performing your job or jobs well. Still, you are mainly engineering a framework to keep from failing, and from which, unless you get lost and forget, you hope to emerge a second time. You work at conceiving your goal.

It would be surprising if you weren’t sometimes sick or injured or assaulted or taken advantage of. You can’t afford to spend your life resenting and blaming, though. You’re bound to be discouraged sometimes — I feel overwhelmed many times, don’t suppose otherwise. Many people become permanently discouraged.

You economize, prioritize, optimize. You focus on the next achievable step toward the goal you currently conceive, and the means successfully to take that step. If someone is understanding or kind, that’s good luck — you can’t count on it. You don’t snarl at understanding and kindness when you encounter it — you’re grateful, touched, thrilled. It’s a miracle.

Competition for attention and resources is fierce. Often, you must convince lucky people, who imagine they have earned all their advantages, to accept your imperfections and risk working with you. They may behave as though they are more than you are. It is hard to take. You are well aware that you are far from perfect.

Of course, it’s likely also that you’ll encounter people you need to convince, who have worked hard and created something of great value, that you are unaware of. They may find you hard to take.

3. FULFILLING YOUR POTENTIAL, your most profound desire, which you keep trying to conceive clearly, then more and more clearly, all your life, once you begin.

It seems to me that there are a better way and a worse way to do this third kind of work.

The worse way is merely to satisfy the appetites you have had to suppress when you were busy with the first two kinds of work. A lot of people retire, then behave like children with money the rest of their lives. They may drink or eat themselves to death, or they may pay for a lot of brief thrills or toys. They satisfy their appetites — then, guess what? — they want more. And more. And more. After many mini-celebrations, swaggering, and selfies, they find themselves unsatisfied again and again, and even at the very end, dissatisfied with the lives they have led.

The better way to do the third kind of work is to fulfill your most profound appetite — for a life of meaning, for development from one level of achievement previously impossible, to the next, and the next. That means working at it — but willingly, gladly — overcoming discouragement again and again.

You may discover what genes or minds are; or bring into being something as useful as cloth, the alphabet, numbers, cheese, or electric lighting; or produce something as inspiring as Beethoven’s nine symphonies. You may help others unable to help themselves. You may be a true public servant, with real integrity, and capable, and achieving small and great, lasting results — in the midst of delusion and selfishness and blame — in government or in whatever private role you play, whether anyone realizes what you are doing or not. Even you may scarcely realize the impact of your courageous efforts. The results will likely be slow in appearing — while you still must do the first two kinds of work. But these results may not stop occurring for months, years, centuries.

You may provide other individuals, within or beyond your family or neighborhood, with the physical or mental means of living more freely — that is, being able to make choices more to their real advantage, and being able to follow through on those choices. Being careful not just to meddle, to make yourself feel important, you may help your family members, local community, or all humanity, whether or not anyone notices that you are doing it, to achieve a more just arrangement, in which people interact with mutual respect and self-respect — and willing and able and eager cooperation.

IF THIS SOUNDS IMPOSSIBLE, that is only because you have work yet to do. But this kind of work is real, lasting satisfaction, real success. What do I want? I want the strength to get to, and to do that work!

Correct me if I’m wrong, please.

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–Wrightstown Article #9 © Eric Chaet 2022, used in The Wrightstown (Wisconsin, USA) “Spirit” by permission. To use this article in another publication, email Eric Chaet at chaetsarticles at gmail dot com.