It is my strong intention this year to love my work. It’s easy to love the “fun” parts of my job – helping a client find a new perspective on her team’s challenges, leading an organization as they set new directions, strengthening a leadership team through honest dialogue. Sometimes it’s not so easy to love the day to day processes and tasks that make it possible for me to do the “fun” stuff. This year, I intend that my love for my work will embrace all of the work I do.
During the holidays, my husband and I took some time to share passages from “The Prophet” (Kahlil Gibran). I was most struck by what Gibran says about work. Here is the part that stood out for me.
You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.
Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, “He who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is nobler than he who ploughs the soil.
And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet.
But I say, not in sleep but in the over-wakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;
And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.
Work is love made visible.
The “punchline” at the end is often quoted alone and it sometimes leaves me feeling that it’s all about finding the work we love rather than simply loving the work that finds us. And it is in loving that labour that we make it sweet.
This year, I’m loving all of my labour as part of loving life.
Have a wonderful new year!