A job is just a job and so much more

I was married at 20. The good news is that it’s all worked out, and I’m very happily married almost 46 years later.

After getting married, I got my first full-time job. I’d wandered without focus or discipline through almost three years of college. After getting hitched at the altar, I found I needed to take care of my responsibilities to my wife and gratify our sincere desires to eat food and pay rent.

My first real job was working a swing shift at a paper goods warehouse in a bad section of town. For safety reasons, my co-workers often walked together to our cars after our shifts, which frequently included overtime and ended at 2 or 3 AM. I would go home, sleep, wake up, and return to work. It should have been a stark encouragement to me to avoid steady employment, but a little bit of it caught my attention, and I’ve engaged in my work life ever since.

It felt good to earn a paycheck and to take my earnings to the bank and then to the grocery store. It felt good to pay my own way, to have a little bit of freedom, and to have a warm place to snuggle up with the love of my life on the weekends. Many of my initial motivations were low on Maslow’s hierarchy.

But it also felt good to have an opportunity to use my intelligence and creativity to pursue something besides an academic reward. There was an element of self-actualization even while loading trucks on a chilly shipping dock at midnight. There was always a better way to do the work, problems to solve, and suggestions to be made. I found the experience meaningful, even though the universe wouldn’t have noticed for one second if the business had disintegrated into thin air.

Now some of my motivations are different. I’ve moved up Maslow’s hierarchy to a degree while enjoying the simple satisfaction of going to the grocery store and stocking up the refrigerator. I want to share my knowledge and feel valued for my experience and contributions. I want to help other people pay their rent and buy their groceries. I want to see things through – to set goals and then pursue them, sometimes doggedly, sometimes without immediate reward. I want to do simple things well and difficult things in new and better ways. I want to learn every day and share what I’ve learned with my modest circle of friends and family, and business associates.

I was not only happy in those early days to have a job – any job – I was also determined to be a thinking worker and make meaning out of thin material in situations that afforded me little status or upward mobility. That primary motivation to do my best hasn’t changed, and I haven’t had to lean on others, or my employers, to make my work life meaningful.

There is a certain nobility that comes from doing one’s work – any work at any level -- with heart and commitment. And when the heart is engaged, the work can often give back more than a paycheck or a bag of groceries. I learned in a chilly warehouse that if I cared, I would find meaning and purpose. I’m honestly glad I didn’t spend my entire career loading trucks, but I am glad that I don’t look back on the experience with regret or sourness. It was a job, just a job, and so much more than a job.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash