Why Work?

We’re all driven to work, but why we do it can make all the difference.

I sat listening to the three friends talk about their work. A small business owner, a lawyer, and, honestly, I don’t remember what the third one did.

The four of us, along with a couple of the business owner’s sisters were gathered in his luxury high-rise apartment just a few hours after I officiated the funeral for his 20-something-year-old son.

His sisters kept themselves busy as the four of us sipped whisky and I listened to them complain about paying in taxes multiple times my income. Apparently, relatively small businesses don’t get to share the same loopholes and benefits that allow Amazon to get away with tax avoidance.

How the conversation turned to me I still don’t know. Did the other men realize I’d been silent for a while and they were trying to include me? Then again, maybe I’d courtesy laughed at something just a bit too hard. Or maybe in their cock-measuring contest they decided to highlight the apparent loser. Whatever the case, suddenly, I was asked for my input.

“I can’t help but think that sometimes we forget the grand why of our businesses. Are they there for us to build ourselves up, creating our own little kingdoms, or is stewarding them an opportunity to contribute to the wellbeing of others … our customers, employees, and overall society. If it’s the second, I feel like so many things we often see as problems look differently, be it paying a higher wage so employees can better care for their families or paying taxes so we can all have roads and other public services.”

The room grew quiet until one of the sisters asked, “Who needs a refill?”

Photo by Avi Richards on Unsplash

Reasons For Work

At the time, if asked to give credit for the perspective I’d offered, I would have pointed to the theologian Martin Luther and his extensive writing on the doctrine of vocation. That said, it could also have come from the lips of the philosopher Alfred Adler.

In this season when I unexpectedly find myself unemployed, I’m aiming to be intentional in how I move forward. That starts with asking basic questions, including, “Why work?”

There seem to be three answers to this question.

The first is working to live. Now, this could be about pure survival or it could be about maintaining a particular lifestyle. Either way, the end goal is earning the necessary income. Here what you do tends not to matter so much. You can use the powers of persuasion to sell rubber dog shit to lending a creative communication voice that perpetuates elite gaslighting. The corporate ladder can be the people you step on in route to your next promotion. Underpaying employees, providing customers the absolute minimum, or trashing the environment are all viable options because the end goal is your bottom line (it’s basically the individuals version of corporate America).

The second way to answer, “Why work?” is living to work. Here work and your sense of identity or worth become intermingled. You show up early and stay late, not because you get paid more to be there, but because it’s where you feel recognized and affirmed. Work literally makes you come alive. It can also turn you into the asshole on the couch at home.

The third option is working to love. This is what I was getting at when the three businessmen asked for my thoughts. It fits beautifully with Luther’s doctrine of vocation. It’s also where the philosophy of Adler comes in.

Meeting Adler

Adler’s theory on work wasn’t what brought me to him in the first place. AI suggested I read, The Courage to Be Disliked, while asking a string of questions about dating and relationships. I've realized that I tend to not expect anything from others even as I’m happy to go to the ends of the earth for a partner (a practice that hurts both people and the relationship). But since that’s still on the stack of things I’m trying to sort through I won’t say more just yet.

But while Adler’s relationship wisdom is still taking root, his broader framework aligns beautifully with the one I’ve offered here and his thoughts on work make all kinds of sense.

If you’ve never heard of Adler, don’t feel bad as he’s sort of the wonky and somewhat superfluous third wheel to his contemporaries Freud and Jung. But as I’m learning, he offers a wildly different take on psychology than his better-known contemporaries. Moreover, his theory holds a particular appeal to men.

Adler For Men

Why does Adler appeal to men? Because testosterone drives action and his psychology invites action.

For example, while Freud and Jung can have a somewhat deterministic flavor where trauma defines your life moving forward, Adler would argue that trauma teaches us one way to respond to difficulty at the time. That said, we can learn new responses. As I’ve written about here, it’s not so much what happens to you but how you respond that matters.

In a society that sometimes seems bent on binding everyone in bubble wrap and calls on us to offer trigger warnings because what we’re saying might stir up some hurtful emotions, Adler says that we get to decide not only how we respond to the past but also the present, calling each of us to take accountability for ourselves even as we nurture our care for neighbor.

Also, while Freud and Jung focus on looking inward, Adler turns our attention outward. This doesn’t mean you ignore body, heart, and soul, but you cultivate them not so you can be a superior human, but so you can be a superior member of the community.

Note: Here is another appeal point for men. Testosterone fuels competitiveness, so let’s get competitive about our contributions to society.

For Adler, feelings of worth and belonging stem from adding something to the broader community. And while there are multiple ways to contribute so even those limited by age, development, or disability can bring something to the community, for those of us who are able bodies, this is the primary function of work.

This means Adler promotes living from the inside out, with your care for the community described as “social feeling” (a generally inadequate translation of the German Gemeinschaftsgefühl), feeding back into you.

Social Feeling In A Feeling Myself World

But here comes the point where things can get challenging.

America is a land of individualism. Our hearts, minds, and souls have been formed from birth to look out for ourselves because nobody else will do it. This makes working for love a dangerous act. Read that again, but this time, let your testosterone feel the invitation to risk.

Side Thought: If you talk to people in historically marginalized communities, there is a much deeper sense of “social feeling” that formed out of necessity, which seems to make this hyper-individualism a white American cultural thing.

What makes it risky?

This is where Adler’s theory of life tasks comes into play. Each of us have tasks to fulfill in this life. These include work, love, and social relationships (which make up my outer realms of impact). His students over the years have added being and belonging (which make up my inner realm of impact).

The key to life is having the courage to do your life tasks. When it comes to work, your task is to do what you’re wired to do in a way that enhances the well-being of the broader community. Simultaneously, others have the life task of receiving what you are wired to do.

But what if you are wired to make furniture and the broader community decides they’d rather get cheaper, lower-quality goods from Walmart or Ikea (although, with the new Trump tariffs, maybe your custom furniture won’t cost more, people just won’t be able to afford anything)?

Or what if you’re a fount of wisdom with a knack for helping others sort their way to a more meaningful existence, but they decided they’d rather sit on the couch and watch sports rather than work on themselves?

You could even be a health professional but between a medical system focused on its bottom line and people more interested in symptom abatement than health, your task goes unappreciated.

The point is that we can do our tasks to perfection, but if others don’t do their task of receiving our task, our work drifts into the void.

And here Adler’s advice is terrifying: Do your task anyway.

He’d even go so far as to invite you to have the courage to be confident that others are out there who not only need what you offer but are willing to engage.

You might need to do some extra work to find your tribe, but once you do, the results will provide every member of the community with what they need.