Worth Beyond Work: What Would That Even Look Like?
Photo by Pixabay from Pexels
I was recently reflecting on work and realized that I have a good few decades of it ahead of me. That is a good thing, work has been the path to a life different from the one that was seemingly planned for me as a brown middle-class woman. I am still all of those things, but work has given me agency and access, which I did not always have. The importance of work becomes even higher when you are part of a country where jobs are often the only way to financial (and related) success, not just for an individual but also for entire families and subsequent generations.
Why people work the way they do, what motivates them personally and professionally, what shaped them as they grew up are all perspectives that I am deeply interested in. In recent months, burnout has been on our collective minds, a lot more so since the pandemic upended so many of the work-life boundaries that were essential to daily well-being. Talking through what lies at the core of why so many of us are burned out at sessions led by Qin Coe, highlights the ‘Worth Beyond Work’ belief that many, many of us struggle with.
What a funny way of saying it, worth beyond work. Before I dive into this deeper, I want to be upfront about the privilege of a life that allows for reflection about the meaning of work and our personal and complex relationships with it.
All my life, through school and undergrad at Delhi University, at our home and in other people’s homes, the conversations were about how hard you worked, your exam scores or achievements, where were you going to study, what you would do, what mattered. Even if it was not named, a lot of the value assigned to you as a person was based on your work - of course, this differed based on gender norms. I know this is not unique to me or just to the reality of being from a large country; societies across the world value you explicitly based on what you do for work. If you do work that you find meaningful, I think the feeling intensifies even more - you push yourself more and more. And so you do, and you do, and you do some more and perhaps someday you pause, and you realize that you are exhausted.
As I think about this more, there are two unique questions that formulate: why do you work, and why do you (consciously or unconsciously) equate your worth to work? The former I think is easy to answer - there are so many (different) reasons and motivations to work, including your paycheck, to stay busy, to get things done, to support your family, to live a meaningful life, all valid. But so often, we equate being worthy with our work. If we could just do more, we would be better. Better than what, and better why, aren’t questions we ask ourselves usually.
But the key question is why does your worth stem solely or largely from work? Depending on who you ask, there are many reasons:
Not overextending yourself equals complacency, complacency equals failure
You live in a space where hustle culture is glorified
Achievements are valued, the process not so much
How you appear matters more to the people around you than how you feel
Now is not the time for balance, I’ll rest when I am dead sorts of messaging
To prove something: to yourself, to family, at work, to people around you
It is what I was raised to do
It does make me wonder, does life have to be a constant self-improvement project? Is there a space between growth and complacency, which is living? I am guessing this will be a lifelong reflection, at least for me.