Work is more than just work

I recently read a statistic that roughly half of people are not very satisfied with their jobs while an estimate of about a third of Americans feel good or very satisfied with their profession. Those are both not insignificant proportions of the working population. Mind you, these are just estimates. What got me truly thinking is the treatment of work as more than work. Most human beings spend an inordinate amount of time at the office interacting with coworkers. When we’re young, we often don’t have any idea what it is really like to be at work and to be working. How does one know that when they’re still in school unless maybe you had a kin bring you into their professional world at an early age.

Yet, work should not be treated lightly. I think so much anguish and suffering in this world originates from a mismatch of an individual and his or her profession. So much of that suffering can be alleviated simply if the person were to switch fields–almost like being in the right marriage, but I won’t necessarily go there in this post. Assuming one works full-time and regular hours, that’s forty to sixty hours a week we spend at work. That’s roughly a third of your waking hours. If you’re not enjoying that time even a little bit, what are you even doing? What is a two week vacation going to do? Of course, there are individuals who are stuck in positions where the salary is a necessity. To that end, I don’t really know what to say. A person’s happiness is inseparable from how they make a living, and how much they enjoy that process. Work should not to be taken lightly. Work is more than just work.