1 Job, career or calling?
The difference between work that is experienced as a job, a career or a calling is an ostensibly simple place to begin this book but a pivotal distinction to make. There is an old parable known as āThe Three Stonecuttersā, made famous in 1954 by Peter Drucker in The Practice of Management, which neatly illustrates this difference. The story goes that a traveller comes across some workers who are breaking up rocks. When asked what they are doing, the first one answers miserably, āI have to move these huge stones around to make some money. But it is barely enough to eatā. The second worker is engaged industriously and explains, āIām earning a living by doing the best job of stonecutting in the countryā. Sweating but happy, the third worker replies, with a visionary light in his eyes: āWhy, canāt you see? I am building a cathedral!ā
The responses of the first and second workers suggest they approach their work as a job, focused on specific tasks ā āI am breaking up rocksā ā or possibly even a career, focused on longer term financial rewards ā āI am making a livingā. Yet psychological studies have shown that one of the deepest forms of satisfaction and psychological success occurs when a person experiences work as more than a job or career ā when it is a calling.1 There is a larger vision encompassing the discrete tasks, which extends beyond making money. As the third worker enthusiastically explains, āI am building a cathedralā.
In everyday life, the words work, job, career and vocation are frequently used synonymously. Yet an essential step in taking stock of our situation and gaining clarity about work which holds genuine meaning for us is to differentiate between these concepts and to consider the relevance of each in our own life.
In this first chapter, weāll explore the difference between these terms from historical, etymological and phenomenological perspectives. Throughout the chapter, I interweave real-life stories, anecdotes and perspectives from people with whom I have worked, interviewed or taught. Iāll also touch on some of the difficulties people experience in the struggle to integrate a calling into the matrix of contemporary life.
Perspectives on work, career and vocation
Throughout Western history, people have held very different perspectives regarding the meaning of work. The ancient Greeks considered work to be a necessary evil, with no intrinsic value for the individual. Work caused degeneration of the body and soul, robbing people of the leisure necessary for physical, intellectual and psychological health. Plato spoke of workers āwhose souls are bowed and mutilated by their vulgar occupations even as their bodies are mutilated by their mechanical artsā.2 In the Renaissance, philosophers reversed this idea. Work became an opportunity for humanity to exert control over nature and establish itself as sovereign over a world of its own making, thereby likening man to the divine.3 In the 19th century, Karl Marx argued for work as an act of self-realisation, although, under the aegis of capitalism, work had become so disagreeable that it was āavoided like the plagueā.4 By the late 20th century, American positivist psychology was promoting work within the capitalist system as a viable pathway towards self-actualisation and fulfilment.
Over the centuries, the pendulum has swung back and forth between views of work as a form of self-denial or a form of self-fulfilment. In 1927, in The Future of an Illusion, and in 1930, in Civilization and its Discontents, Sigmund Freud was the first to bring a psychoanalytic lens to investigate the nature of work. Freud observed that the compulsion to work is created by external hardship. Now, many people would hardly argue with that today. We have bills to pay and mouths to feed, and work provides us with money to do that. But the motivation to work, thought Freud, is counter-instinctive. It requires the suppression of libidinal impulses in favour of civilization and communal needs. āEvery civilization rests on an obligation to work and a renunciation of instinctā, said Freud, āand therefore inevitably provokes opposition from those affected by those demandsā.5 In other words, according to Freud, we only work because we have to work. Really, weād rather not work at all.
On the other hand, perhaps this depends on the nature of our work. Freudās analysis speaks to the coercive nature of individualsā relationships with work in industrial and capitalist societies, but he tends to overlook the sense of meaning and satisfaction which many people derive from work. Freud did concede that a person may be able to heighten his yield of pleasure and happiness in life by sublimating his libidinal instincts into finer or higher creative or intellectual work, and he gave the example of an artist or a scientist. Even ordinary professional work, Freud conceded, may provide happiness, although work as a path to happiness has not been highly prized by men (at least, Freudās implication goes, not as much as sexual activity has been prized as a path to happiness).
Amongst four dozen definitions of the noun āworkā, the Oxford English Dictionary includes: āAction or activity involving physical or mental effort and undertaken in order to achieve a result, especially as a means of making oneās living or earning money; labour; (oneās) regular occupation or employmentā. This is the definition of work towards which most vocational guidance and employment initiatives are directed, focused on supporting people to secure employment from which they can derive an income. Work in this context entails āgetting a jobā. The focus is on necessity and remuneration rather than pleasure or fulfilment.
A job refers to a piece of work, a place where a person is employed or a particular thing one does to earn money. Samuel Johnson, the author of an 18th century English dictionary, described ājobā as a low or vulgar word, of uncertain etymology. In previous eras, ājobā has referred variously to a task or transaction performed opportunistically for private interest or advantage; as criminal slang for an arranged robbery; and also to a cartload that a horse could pull. Iāve also heard it said that a job is an old Scottish derivation from ājobbieā (to defecate) ā it was an expression for shovelling a pile of manure from one place to another. Iāve been unable to verify this, but I like it anyway. For is it not an apt metaphor for what many people do feel about the jobs they do each day?
Occasionally, the term āworkā is used in the loftier sense of opus, referring to an individualās life work or major work. Our āinner workā of personal self-development is also experienced and described as work. But in general, when people think about what the word āworkā means to them, itās usually associated with exertion and an effort of will at a mundane level, propelled by material or economic necessity, as Steve describes here:
Itās what you do to earn money, without necessarily having any sense of progression, growth or development in a career or vocational sense. Itās a clichĆ© that if you are doing what you love, you donāt experience this as work.
(Steve)
In contrast, the word ācareerā refers to where we have begun to think about our skills and aptitudes and translated them into a recognised occupation (such as a marketer, engineer or financier). We have started to manage and direct our professional life in a longitudinal sense, beyond a particular job. With career, there is a focus on advancement, economic return and progression over time.6
Career for me refers to the progression of a role or skill set that has more of a material orientation, or at least has a dollar value in the market place. I see career primarily as having an economic connotation.
(Steve)
Interestingly, the etymology of ācareerā refers to āa running, course, or course through lifeā. It is related to the French word carriĆØre, which means racecourse, and the Latin carrus, meaning cart, and it implies a certain organised, competitive focus. The word career is also associated with the swift movement of a horse,7 the flight of a bird in falconry and the course of the sun or a star through the heavens. These are all ancient symbolic associations which intimate the possibility of a more transcendent, purposeful flight of spirit in our careers.
Although we may work hard in various jobs throughout our lives, this does not necessarily correlate with the sense of having a career. At age 38, Steve, for example, did not consider himself to have a career:
in the sense that I have built momentum and achieved steady progress within an institution or within the market place. This hasnāt happened to date. I donāt think I have a career. I have more of a ārap sheetā with a long list of positions Iāve filled to get money.
(Steve)
Annabella was a woman in her sixties who never self-identified as someone with a career, although as a single mother she had worked hard in various jobs ā including claims examiner and medical assistant ā and she expressed a strong sense of vocation:
Career means having a plan ā an aspiration, a goal and a plan to get there. Itās a socially acceptable narrative about how a professional work-life should be defined.
(Annabella)
After years of work in the financial services industry, Jim had developed a strong disdain for the notion of career, which he associated with being corralled on a defined course:
A career is a series of moves within a discipline, providing a certain level of satisfaction. A career usually begins as someone elseās idea of what you should do to make money.
(Jim)
Jim resisted applying the word ācareerā to what he later discovered to be his passion, his vocation, as a filmmaker. So committed was Jim to following this calling that he said he would leave the work if it became a career, pursued only for financial ends.
Jimās resistance to the notion of ācareerā is not unusual, particularly amongst millennials. Career is a concept which tends to belong more to a 20th century modernist paradigm of ascent and progression, and many young people are understandably disillusioned with that paradigm. A 2015 report by the Foundation for Young Australians indicated that the average Australian is likely to have up to five career changes and 17 jobs in their lifetime ā and, more alarmingly, that up to 60% of jobs for which university students are currently studying are likely to be automated in the future.
To be honest, ācareerā for me has always felt like a bit of a dirty word. I think due to the fact that Iāve never felt very clear about exactly what Iād like to do long-term in life and work, listening to others speak of ācareer-mindednessā and ābeginning a careerā has always felt somewhat alienating and confining to me, and has always been a source of stress in that it only served to remind me that ātime is running outā (to decide what I want to do) and that I didnāt have a āplanā. As such, I think itās a concept that Iāve mostly just avoided, even throughout my studies at university. Until now.
(Leo)
When Leo learned about the concept of vocation, a term he had previously associated with the w...
