In a perfect world, when it came to choosing an occupation, we would have only two priorities
in mind: firstly to find a job that we enjoyed
and secondly to find a job that paid us enough to cover reasonable material needs
But in order to think so freely, we would have to be emotionally balanced in a way that
few of us are. In reality, when it comes to choosing an occupation, we tend to be haunted
by three additional priorities. We need: - to find a job that will pay not just enough
to cover reasonable material expenses but a lot more besides, enough to impress other
people - even other people we don’t like very much.
- we crave to find a job that will allow us not to be at the mercy of other people, whom
we may deep down fear and distrust. - and we hope for a job that will make us
well known, esteemed, honoured and perhaps famous, so that we will never again have to
feel small or neglected.
Needless to say, these three additional requirements make working life hugely more complicated
and unhappy than it would otherwise have needed to be. No wonder we may get stuck choosing
what to do. Rather than being able to focus on the jobs that we are passionate about and
that we would intrinsically enjoy, we have to twist our natures to appease extrinsic
imperatives. There is no way that we could, for example, work as a kindergarten teacher,
a psychotherapist, a carpenter or a cook. Our psychological drive to impress, to have
power over others and to be known to strangers preclude such relatively modest choices from
the outset.
The state of our psyches means that we have to aim for far more stellar careers, even
in fields we really don’t much like and may have to work much harder than is good
for our health or our families. We are prone to be constantly panicked - because the bar
for ‘failing’ is so much higher. A slight wind of disapproval from the public might
be experienced as appalling, a bit less money than the astronomical sum we made last year
will register as fateful. Under pressure, we may make unwise and hasty moves, we might
cut corners, involve ourselves in risky schemes and not give our work the time and calm it needs.
What would enable us to make the right career choices is something that seems, on the face
of it, to have nothing to do with work at all: love, a profound experience of love in
both childhood and adulthood.
A child who is properly loved is a creature who doesn’t need to prove itself in any
significant way. It doesn’t have to excel at school, dazzle acquaintances or shore up
a parent’s fragile sense of esteem (it may do well at school any way but because it enjoys
the work, not because it has to boost a parent). It can find its way to its own pleasures,
it doesn’t need to amaze; because it’s special enough just by existing. It may end
up working extremely hard, but it will do so because it is passionate, not because it
craves applause. It can concentrate on doing a job very well, while unimpeded by any worries
as to whether it will be known in 100 years or to people in another city. It can potter
away in obscurity, deriving gratification from the business at hand.
An experience of adult love further enhances a requisite sense of security. When someone
properly loves us, their patience, concern and tenderness make us feel rooted and welcome
on the earth. It doesn’t really matter if no one knows who we are and if there is very
little left over at the end of the month. ‘Two people who are in love will be happy
to sleep on a park bench,’ wrote D. H. Lawrence, an idea which may not be literally true, but
which conveys well enough what room for manoeuvre love gives us in relation to our material priorities
It follows that when people crave power, fortune and fame, it isn’t greed that is driving
them, but an anguished feeling of being unloved - for which we can feel enormous compassion.
They look like winners, they are in reality unhappy victims.
Excessive achievements are
the legacy of an emotionally damaged sense that it isn’t enough just to be.
It may have become second nature to us to try to fix emotional wounds through our career
choices and exploits. We may not even realise what we are up to. We should dare to ask:
what might I have done with my life if I had felt properly loved from the start? And we
may have to acknowledge, with tears in our eyes, how different our path would have been,
how many genuine ambitions we sacrificed in the name of shoring up a sense of acceptability
we should have had from infancy.
The most astonishing career achievements will never compensate anyone for the lack of love
they have suffered: work cannot fix a deficit of love. We should enjoy work on its own terms
and, in another part of our lives, mourn and seek redemptive substitutes for the love we
originally we lacked.