“Absorbedness is the paradise of work, but what is its provenance or etiology? Surely it is an ecstasy of transport, of loss of ego; but it is also something less transcendent: To work is to please the powerful masters who are parents—who are family, who are church, who are custom or culture. Not to work is to violate the contract or to disobey the injunction, and to displease the dispensers of supper and love, of praise’s reward. Not working becomes conviction of unworthiness. We prove ourselves worthy by the numbers of work.”
– Donald Hall, Life Work
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“The purpose of each person’s life is not just self-gratification. It has a much larger moral purpose, but by this is not meant some narrow-minded Victorian social restraint. A person should contribute to the quality of the world.”
Robert M. Pirsig, On Quality: an Inquiry Into Excellence
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We all must work.
Is it realistic to expect ourselves to always be doing quality work?
How do we define what the right work is?
Work doesn’t have one definition.
There is work we do for others.
But the most precious work is that done for ourselves.
I suppose there are the fortunate ones who through their own work, are recognised and rewarded by others.
Is the promise of a reward the motivation for the work?
Or is absorbedness in the task at hand the true reward?
If that is so, then those of us labouring away on an anonymous blog can experience the same thrill and meaning than the greatest of literary masters.
It is not the clapping of hands that are proof of good work.
But our own sense of a job well done.
Conversations With Quotations 