How to work

loving life through labor

Always you have been told that work is a curse and labor a misfortune.

But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,

And in keeping yourself with labor you are in truth loving life,

And to love life through labor is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.

— The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran

Les Raboteurs de parquet (Gustave Caillebotte, 1875)

i.

“Delivering beer is a beautiful job, my friend,” Rajko says, grinning gleefully as we sit at the farmhouse kitchen table, drinking hot black coffee and gazing out into the cold bluish mist of dawn, hours before anyone else is awake. Our daily morning ritual.

Loose black coils of hair and olive skin, concentric gold earnings and bronze-brown eyes, dark patterned ink creeping up both arms, Rajko is from a small village in the mountains of northern Italy, near Venice. He’s 31, but somehow simultaneously eight and eighty years old. Silly enough to make pilot’s goggles with his hands twisted upside-down, but serious enough to remember that nothing worth knowing can be taught¹.

He’s a man who knows in his heart what a simple and frugal thing happiness is: a cappuccino, a hot wood stove, a thick slice of fresh bread, the sound of sunlight warming the earth. I admire his light spirit and honest audacity, his old-fashioned ease, his way of seeming at home in life. His readiness to grasp and hold, but willingness to let go. He skipped the trivial examinations of school but has excelled in the tremendous examination of existence. 

Rajko works odd jobs, bartending or being a barista or delivering beer, making enough money to keep traveling the world. 

“You go into a bar or restaurant or golf course,” he continues “and can bring your presence. Positive energy, you know? A smile.

You can change someone’s day, even for only two minutes… It’s just beautiful.”

ii.

I read Too Loud a Solitude recently, one of Bohumil Hrabal’s brilliant books. It is the story of Hanta, a man who has worked in a damp, dark basement compacting waste paper into bales for the last 35 years. But instead of despising his job with a quiet desperation, he views it as artistry. The expression of his soul. 

Hanta picks through the never-ending mountain of waste paper for prints of Renaissance art or forgotten philosophy books, saving them from an indifferent destruction. He has a fondness, edging on felicity, for careful and slow work. For the hidden joys of his craft that no one else on earth is privy to. He tries hard to make each bale beautiful and labors over every small detail to ensure he leaves his unique stamp. Because it is worth it to him. It is how he wants to live his life. For everything he does to be beautiful, even though absolutely nobody cares. 

I deeply admire Hanta’s ability to take work seriously and go beyond the confines of his job description. To treat his profession as a privilege and a pathway for contribution. To let nothing he does to be done carelessly.

His story is a reminder that every job has the potential for poetry and ample room for love. 

iii.

This month, I’ve been helping harvest on a small vegetable farm in the Okanagan Valley. I’ve cherished the slowly dripping days and pleasant little hours. The long weeks of labor, steeped in sunlight and soil. The physical exertion and fresh air. Working hard feels good.

As I kneel in the wind-swept fields that smell of damp earth and dry leaves, breath steaming through the crisp morning sky or bathing in the low and glancing rays of golden late afternoon sunshine, I’ve contemplated my philosophy of work.

I don’t believe in work as a calling—something to throw myself headlong into. I think there are deeper wells of meaning to plumb than career, like family or faith. My life ambition outstretches my work ambition². Time is too personal and precious to pass the next 40 years hunched over a laptop screen for 10 hours a day in a state of heightened stress, while the specter of apathy creeps, like a fog, into every recess of existence. To live locked in the orderly house of email and spreadsheets and zoom calls almost defines disembodiment. I don’t want to sell my life for money.

But I also don’t believe in work as a transaction. The “clock in, do your job, mind your business, get paid, go home” mentality. I think it’s an extraordinary mistake. A passive and half-hearted approach toward many hours of existence, that sabotages your chance of creating a serene lifestyle³.

I don’t think work is a waste of life, one to quietly quit. I believe it can be about more than merely trading time for money. 

iv.

This year, I’ve turned down several seductive job offers. One from an author who’s sold over a million books, one from a 27 year old who sold his marketing agency for millions of dollars, one from an entrepreneur with millions of followers. I didn’t believe in the work. I shuddered at the image of the man it would make me. 

If I don’t respect my work, it’s difficult to respect myself. And if I don’t respect the way I earn money, it loses all its value. Nothing runs through the fingers faster than what we feel is unearned. 

I think doing honest work for the right reasons is a duty to the soul and an act of fidelity to the virtue of sweat⁴. A sort of ingredient in living well that cannot be substituted.

No matter what it is, I want to do my job well and with pride. I want every small act I do to be as careful and good and tasteful as it can. When possible, make it beautiful⁵. At the very least, I want to leave traces of earnest effort everywhere I go. Even on simple mundane jobs or boring tedious tasks I dislike⁶. Not for the company or a boss, but for my own sake. A certain cleanliness of spirit. 

If I desire, I can treat all the duties of my life with a cozy dedication. 

Really, I want to work with love. To treat my work as love made visible. For love to shine through the murky, confusing clouds of commerce and capitalism to something more deeply human.

I hope this shows through my writing. The loving attentiveness in each careful word. The fretting and fiddling and fixing, attempting the intimacy of dear friendship despite our distance. Waking at 2am rereading each line in my mind, walking at 2pm capturing fleeting thoughts. I hope the effort beneath every sentence pulses through the page.

v.

The farm has been a living test. There are plenty of reasons not to care, to shirk responsibility or resist repetitive work. It’s not my farm. I’m not getting paid. I’m leaving in a week and never back again. There is every opportunity to plant garlic sideways or ignore wilted arugula or mutter and moan about the frost on my fingers as I pull weeds. But instead, I’ve chosen to act as if I own the farm myself and will stay here forever. I’ve taken on responsibility to be honest and cheerful and charming whatever I’m doing. To serve others and be useful, as best as I can.

There is no separation between work and life. To live well is to work well⁷.

I cannot compartmentalize my character. The work I do shapes the person I am. How I do anything is how I’ll learn to do everything. It’s a quiet undercurrent, almost impossible to detect. But it’s there. The thread that weaves through all that I do. 

In the end, I care less about what I accomplish and more about the man I am while accomplishing. Who I become through my work. 

My goal is not money or material things, but simply a desire for heartfelt effort.

Life opens to those who love it through labor.

With all my love,

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If you enjoy my writing and want to support my work, the best way is by becoming a patron of this publication. The support from patrons is part of the reason I am able to travel and continue to write ambitiously.

Thank you to everyone who has been generous enough to buy me a coffee. I will always use the money for something beautiful.

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👋 what i’ve been up to:

• I’ve been volunteering on a family-owned organic vegetable farm in southern British Columbia, helping with the harvest. My days have afforded only doing, little thinking or writing, but the sun is sinking more and more. Already I am excited for the ritual of the cold and dark winter mornings.

• On weekends, I’ve been hiking and dog wrangling and wondering how it’s already 1pm, foraging for mushrooms and clay pigeon shooting and lighting campfires with a flamethrower.

✍️ quote i’m pondering:

“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.”

― Leo Tolstoy

📸 photos i took:

October in British Columbia.

1. One morning, I asked him for advice on a big life decision. Smiling, he replied, "You already know the answer. You just have to accept the truth and live with it."

2. After all, there are timeless texts to read and deep friendships to forge! Sun rises to savor, trees to listen to, smoke signals to send. Art to create and babies to make.

3. It may preserve the soul but it robs the world of what you have to uniquely contribute. Everyone has something to uniquely contribute.

4. A saying from Hesiod I'm fond of: "Between man and virtue the gods have placed sweat." That makes effort the meta-virtue. The gateway to all other virtues.

5. If I value beautiful things, I have a duty to add units of beauty to the world, in my own way. To contribute to what I want to see more of. Pull my weight. As a form of faithfulness to what may someday be. 

6. The master craftsman understands, respects, and excels even in the drudgery of their duties.

As M said to me recently, “chores can become a blessing quickly when you find yourself not wishing it away.” 

7. A family friend once said: “We work hard so we live well. All it takes is effort.”