All my travails

Some reflections on work

Travail [travaj] nm. 1. [gén] work – 2. [tâche, emploi] job….
Travailler [travaje] vi. 1. [gén] to work….
--Larousse Dictionnaire Compact/ Français-Anglais, Anglais-Français

For a long time now, I’ve been meaning to write about work, not least because—crushingly enough—I seem to have a lot of it this term. I find myself asking, Do I love my work? Am I happy where I am? Do I want to be a teacher for a long time, if not forever? My friend and colleague D. once told me that she’s been asking herself these questions for about a decade, and yet she’s still in the same profession. Meanwhile, L. says that she would sometimes agonize about wanting to leave the university, and perhaps start her own ballet school. So far, she’s still here. In a conversation with G., I said, “Have you ever found yourself in a place you never intended to be in, doing something for so long and then suddenly realizing that it has come to define you?” In a way, things were simpler when I was younger, even if—or perhaps because—I didn’t know what to do yet. But five or six years after college, I find that what had once been a clean sheet is already partially covered with indelible markings.


I’m reminded of the phrase “the page you made,” which shoppers at Amazon.com are surely familiar with. The website tracks all your activities in the store: you favorites, your wish list, even the assorted products that are related to your previous orders. It’s as though it knows you, even welcoming you by name. When it comes to work, I feel like I can’t escape the page I made. Arguably, I can begin again; perhaps one can always begin again. But it gets harder each day.

When friends whom I haven’t seen for a long time ask me how I’m doing, and what campus life is like these days, I say gravely, “Oh God. I’ve become… a teacher!” This is not new information of course, since I’ve been doing this for about four years now. It’s my first (real) job out of college. But what is new information is that I’ve started to look, speak, and act like a teacher. I can no longer pass for an undergraduate student (sniff). I also no longer obsess about syllabi and course outlines, as though my biological clock has absorbed the rhythms of the trimester. Perhaps most disturbing of all, I can now seamlessly slide between two contrasting modes when the occasion calls for it: From amiable but businesslike (normal setting) to incensed and scary (aggravated setting) and back again, sometimes in the space of two minutes. Or the time it takes to quell the typical classroom disturbance. I’m not sure at which point one earns the power behind such magic statements as “Sit down,” “Quiet please,” or “Go to the Discipline Office.” All I know is that there came a time when I rarely had to use them anymore, and when I did, they were unfailingly effective.

So arguably, in light of these things, I “am” a teacher (but Sartre would add, only in the mode of not being one—hehehe). It’s not that I’m unhappy about it. Actually, most of the time I am grateful about the many wonderful things associated with what I do: the independence of thought, the interaction with people of all ages, the constant intellectual and emotional growth, the flexible hours, the opportunity to travel (sometimes anyway), and most of all, that I’m the boss of me. Well, technically, Dr. G., the chairperson of our department, is the boss of me. But happily enough, in philosophy we generally do our own thing, which is one of the things I love best about our medium-sized niche in the University.

[Image on the right by Paul Dowling.] Sometimes however, even though really, there’s not much to complain about in my line of work, I still wonder whether I want to keep doing this. Wherever we are in our lives, it seems we can’t completely forget the detours we passed up—Frost’s lovely, dark, and deep forests where we could’ve lost ourselves, and perhaps found an equal or greater joy. The forest I passed by, throwing frequent anxious looks behind me, is professional writing. I tell myself now that I can always go back, only of course I will be older and I will have spent years writing for scholarly journals rather than writing for… what? Myself? My loved ones? Someone significant I haven’t met yet? The world? I don’t know. There will be people I will not have met and places I will not have visited, because I choose to stay in La Salle, lecturing with all my heart inside a room of four walls.

This reminds me of one of our discussions in the Philosophy of the Person, the most crowd-pleasing subject I’ve ever handled. We recently talked about Heidegger and his insights about death. The human being—or Dasein to use his German terminology, which literally means “being there” or “thrown there”—is a being-towards-death. Once you fully realize the inevitability of death, or the finitude of life, the corresponding anxiety forces you to become an authentic individual. You reflect on the choices you’ve made in the past. For the first time, you take your freedom seriously: You own up to it, this bewildering range of alternatives for the future. You realize that your life is the page you made, and no one else but you yourself are responsible for it.

I’ve realized that to some extent, my work defines me. I am a teacher. “I” am a teacher. I “am” a teacher. I am a “teacher.” This is the page I made, so far.

* * * *

All you workaholics. [Right: The "original" coven. With L. and N., two of my favorite women at the department--two of my favorite women anywhere! Thanks to N. & M. for these photos.] Over the past several months, I’ve noticed that I’ve been so busy. The people around me are in the same situation, as far as I can see, even though perhaps we could’ve chosen a simpler, less stressful life. Even my sister has been initiated into the workaholic lifestyle, having recently been hired as a programmer by a Japanese company. After a couple of months of intensive training, she now speaks Japanese better than I speak French, which I’ve been studying for over a year! She has also lost some weight in all her effort to fulfill her new obligations. In fact, last night when I finally stumbled woozily upstairs, I glanced briefly at my mom and sister asleep in their own beds, knocked out by exhaustion. Why do we do this to ourselves?

Maybe it beats not having anything consequential to do, not being occupied with anything remotely meaningful, perhaps even feeling that it’s not worth it to get up in the morning. I used to have a very lucrative job that I detested utterly; I lasted about six months, “slutting out” my brain doing drone work. Back then, I made decent money and had hours and hours of leisure time besides. But I hated my work and I hated myself a little too, for not being able to get out of it for awhile.

To some, I may sound spoiled and idealistic, especially considering how other, less choosy people would have gladly traded places with me. In truth, that old job I had before I became a teacher wasn’t so bad, just… boring and meaningless. My friend L.D. once told me that not everything has to be “meaningful,” especially not if it pays so much. Perhaps I won’t survive in the real world, wherever that is. Somebody else will have to handle the matter of money, should I ever decide to start my own family. I love what money can buy but not money itself, if that makes any sense. (Translation: I spend much, much more than I earn.) Anyway. In The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran wrote, “And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.” When it comes to work, it’s important for me to be able to live in a world of ends, not a world of means. I am not a survivor in this sense. Someone will indeed have to take care of me.

Maybe, in an important sense, it is work that gives life meaning. But then I’ve also realized that it’s love (and not just in the romantic sense) that makes work worthwhile. bell hooks wrote in her book, Communion: The Female Search for Love, “I place love before work because I know that without a sound foundation of self-love, I risk undermining my value and the value of all I accomplish through work.” To me, this means not only that you must love your work, but also that to work, you must love enough.