Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life!
At one point or another, most of us have come across this phrase. The dictum has long been a popular idea, but you might know it better under its modern form: “Do what you love. Love what you do.” Appearing in everything from well-curated design blogs to the speeches of Steve Jobs, it never fails to be compelling. Who doesn’t want a career that realizes and fulfills their talents and potentialities?
But there’s a problem here that’s common throughout our culture — a yawning gap between rhetoric and reality.
For many of us at UNC, we have incredible opportunity to pursue what we love. I know I’m not alone in having switched majors more times than I could count, and in fact, a major milestone during my time here was realizing I was pursuing a career that I didn’t have much passion for. I have no doubt anymore that my current majors and career plans engage and fulfill me most, but there was great privilege in both exploring and ultimately choosing what I want to do.
Having once stacked boxes in a windowless stockroom for a job, I don’t remember the work as particularly lovable. It was just a summer job during high school, however, and I soon left for college. I want to say that it was a high school job for everyone there, but it wasn’t. Most of the guys I met are still working there or in a similar job today. We could try to pin this outcome on their personal choices, but the truth is that they’re reacting logically to an economy that has grown most rapidly in repetitive, low-wage occupations since the recession.
It’s comical, albeit sadly so, to think of the reaction if I had asked my exhausted co-workers in between shipments one night, “Hey everyone, are you doing what you love, and loving what you do?” Pretending that everyone can find and choose work that fulfills their being is more than idealistic. It discounts the work of those who are doing what they must in an economy with declining wages and benefits.
But as far as I’ve traveled from that stockroom, there is a commonality that my college course loads share with stacking boxes. No matter what our rhetoric says about it, the reality is that it’s still work. And it’s not only okay but indeed essential that we recognize it that way. By disguising the work of caregivers, one of the fastest-growing occupations in America, as an act of nurturing love, for example, it’s easier to justify the fact that most receive salaries significantly below the cost of living.
However much passion we take in what we do, let’s save the word “love” not for the what’s but for the who’s in our lives — our family and friends. Acknowledging work for what it is only can only enable us to demand the fair compensation and hours it deserves and allow us to get back to those people and parts of our lives we really love.
