Work: Your First Act
Transforming Necessity into Legacy
Work fundamentally shapes who you are, serving as your primary way of contributing to society and finding meaning. Yet this same force can either elevate you through conscious service or trap you in cultural conformity.
Work is your first and most fundamental act of belonging. It embodies your capacity to contribute to the world in a manner that serves others while ensuring your own well-being. If you choose not to work, or to underwork, you survive parasitically by relying on the efforts of others. However, if you embrace work, you act out your desire to be a part of your community.
Through your work, you establish your position within your community. Work is the fastest way to build status and create wealth. More importantly, work becomes the foundation for meaningful relationships - often including love - as you demonstrate your ability to cooperate with and contribute value to others' lives.
Your work is how you leave your mark on the world and build a lasting legacy. In the movie “Meet Joe Black,” Anthony Hopkins plays Bill Parrish, a media mogul who confronts Death (Brad Pitt) while contemplating his legacy. Your work becomes your mark in two ways: through the things you create and the way you create them. Parrish built a media empire, but his legacy was how he conducted himself—with integrity, wisdom, and genuine concern for others’ well-being. As he tells his daughter, “I want you to be swept away. I want you to soar. I want you to sing with ecstasy and dance like a dervish.” This is the essence of meaningful work—it’s not just about accomplishments; it’s about approaching each task with consciousness and care that inspires others to live more fully.
Yet work can also become a trap. For many, it's something we fall into without deliberation, an unconscious entry point onto life's automatic runway. David Brooks writes of this spiritual lethargy or acedia as "the quieting of passion, the getting along without care." Acedia manifests as a life that fails to arouse strong passions, instilling what Brooks calls "a sluggishness of the soul, like an oven set on warm." You might have a job and family, yet remain somehow disconnected from your own existence.
It’s like you’re playing the game of Life. You spin the wheel. You get married. You follow the path, the same path every other player follows. The only difference is who lands on which stop.
Like the Tolstoy character Ivan Ilyich, you follow society's prescribed path - marriage, career advancement, social status - believing you're winning at life while remaining blind to what makes life meaningful. In Tolstoy's story, Ivan realizes too late that his pursuit of propriety and position left him spiritually empty. He followed all the "right" moves, advanced in his career, maintained social appearances, yet never questioned whether this game was worth playing. Only in dying does he see how his life, though technically successful, lacked authentic purpose.
Jungian analyst James Hollis reports a patient once reflected: "I always sought to win whatever the game was, and only now do I realize how much I have been played by the game." This captures the moment of awakening when we realize how our pursuit of success through work has unconsciously shaped us, often leading us away from authenticity rather than toward it.
This automatic, unexamined life is what Soren Kierkegaard termed "philistinism" - the state of being a cultural automaton who does what's expected merely to fit in and get by. Ernst Becker, in The Denial of Death, expanded on this idea, describing how modern life offers us a deceptive security through its routines and limited alternatives. The philistine finds comfort in the trivial - the car, the shopping center, the predictable vacation. By keeping their gaze fixed on these daily patterns, they can live out their days with a dull security, protected from larger questions of meaning and purpose. They are outstanding at keeping up with the Joneses.
Hell, they are the Joneses.
The tragedy is not that you work - as work remains essential for meaning and connection. The tragedy is that you often let work become your unexamined master rather than your chosen path. When you unconsciously adopt society's prescribed routines and rewards, you risk becoming what Becker calls "immediate men" - those who imagine they have an identity simply by participating in culture's prescribed rituals, mistaking consumption for contribution.
The challenge, then, is to transform work from an unconscious current that carries you along into a deliberate practice that expresses your authentic contribution. This requires examining your relationship with work before it becomes what Brooks calls "a life over there" while you remain "over here."
True work - work that serves others while honoring your own nature - demands consciousness. It asks you to question whether you’re pursuing status and security at the expense of meaning, whether you’re winning at a game that slowly drains your vitality. The alternative to philistinism isn't abandoning work, but rather approaching it with awareness and intention.
How you speak about your work can reveal your relationship with it. Many choose to describe their work in verb form - "I write emails," "I keep books," "I sell cars" - because they haven't integrated their contribution into their identity. Others adopt the noun form - "I'm a physician," or “I’m a salesman”.
The key distinction isn't in the language itself, but in your conscious connection to the contribution you make. When you shift from seeing work as what you do to understanding its deeper purpose - like moving from "I write emails" to recognizing yourself as a writer sharing important ideas - your impact and satisfaction deepen.
This deeper connection to your work starts with examining your contribution - not just what you do, but why it matters. A physician trapped in philistinism might perfectly execute medical procedures racking up RVUs or revenue while missing their true role in reducing human suffering. A salesperson can hit every quota while forgetting they're helping people solve real problems.
The shift comes from consciously choosing your relationship with work rather than accepting cultural defaults. When you recognize your work as "I'm a writer sharing ideas that matter" rather than just "I write emails," you transform your contribution. This isn't about job titles or professional identity - it's about finding genuine connection to how you serve others through your work.
This consciousness helps you avoid the trap Hollis' patient described - winning at a game that plays us. Instead of being carried along life's automatic runway, you can approach work as a chosen path of meaningful contribution.
And meaningful contribution is what the world needs more of.