It might be for purpose in itself, a thing done because it is purpose. A work is something undertaken to get something else. It’s a means. Time and effort with an outcome. Certainly money is one of the outcomes one might expect. But also something else. A latte created and served. Paperwork shuffled and re-colored. Oil extracted from underneath shale. A planted or cut down tree. Words written and arranged on a page. However, the outcome after inputs and energy are applied is only one way to think about work. Zhuangzi, the pre-Taoist Zen-ish philosopher, talks about work that one becomes an exceptional instrument of, as the wood carver flows along the grain of the wood. For Zhuangzi, the absorption (and eventual mastery) is the purpose, not the outcome of the work.
When I write, I’m rarely after a great outcome on the page. What I want is to be absorbed in the effort, fully immersed in the development of a poem or an essay. Perhaps a decade or two hence, I’ll be able to reflect after an absorbing session and consider that I have gained some level of mastery. But that reflection is not the purpose. I write because I am consistently absorbed in the endeavor and I expect this to continue as long as my fingers and brain can maintain strong relations, perhaps even after. Attention and engagement are the hallmarks of work that can be maintained, enjoyed, and create meaning. Enjoyment and meaning are the children of attention and engagement (when engagement is not a buzzword on a Human Resources survey).
What do I do for work? This is answered by the answer to the question “what do I pay attention to consistently and in great volumes?” Perhaps sometimes the answer will be paying attention to an organization and its foibles, trying to work out causes, effects, and solutions. This has been a reliable way to pay the bills, but unsustainable in that groups of people don’t like to be looked at as attentively as I tend to look. Therefore, writing, particularly when not about people who are at hand, seems to be something that I may be able to sustain without drawing too much ire or becoming frustrated. Attention can’t be frustrated except by oneself when that attention is directed to nature and oneself (and vaguely in the direction of the “human condition” if one steers mostly clear of obvious conflict).
I also spend a lot of time on my bicycle, but I don’t believe this qualifies as work. It only requires my full attention when I’m also listening to an audiobook at multiple times the original recording speed. So I suppose these activities in concert constitute working. Does reading and exercise add up to something that might look like mastery? My quadriceps and knowledge of Henry Kissinger’s weird dating habits seems to point to maybe (though quads and memory are both constantly fading, and one can only listen to the books so quickly). Zhuangzi was convinced that knowledge was a project that was necessary, but not susceptible to the same flow & mastery that were available to butchers and wood carvers, as knowledge is infinite. So my cycling-listening remains a hobby.
Working in organizations enables some flow-style attentiveness professions. Engineers, some designers, and perhaps those elusive masters of PowerPoint may find that some of their efforts involve entire attention, the type of engagement that can’t be quantified in those surveys. Much of the work I have done, both fortunately and unfortunately, has been highly self-conscious and political, prone to infinite “turtles all the way down” regressions and mostly immune to flow. The acquisition and wielding (even “wisely”) of power is one of the things Zhuangzi warns against, in part because it is not in the least bit susceptible to flow. The development of strategies for the powerful is the same, as it follows all the rules of power-acquisition (contrary to the chicanery of those creators of “strategy templates”); Kissinger is a useful cautionary tale. Maybe I’ll go back to working in large groups if writing can be my singular mode (more likely as a freelancer than as a full, meeting-paying member). More attractive is to follow Zhuangzi’s parable of the emperor’s turtle: would it rather be in the glass box in the middle of the palace or in the mud along the riverbank?
Roman Ryan 