Work. Need or desire?

When we think of work we often associate it with a commitment, an activity that gives us the means to survive: we earn the money that allows us to pay our rent or home mortgage, buy groceries, and buy basic necessities.

But is that all it is? A tool for survival, as hunting was for early humans?

Often when we introduce ourselves we do so through our profession, “Hello, my name is Francis and I am a bartender,” or “Hello I am Sara and I am an accountant,” thus defining ourselves through our work. We can say that what we do helps build who we are, our being; when we work we make our skills and knowledge our own and these go to complement and shape our personal identity.

It is then something that touches us more deeply and one wonders: if I live the hours I spend at work with impatience, how will I stay outside? Do I live work with anguish and the arrival of the end of the shift as salvation?

Not for everyone is work a source of satisfaction and gratification, but we may perceive it as an environment that does not make us feel valued, in which we may not feel effective, and which causes us dissatisfaction.

Therefore, it becomes important to stop and allow ourselves time to ask, “Why am I suffering?” It is precisely by starting from the search for the reason why we experience work with suffering that we can seek and understand where we want to go and what we really want to do. Indeed, it is necessary to pro-ject, to cast one’s gaze forward toward the goal one wants to reach because if one navigates by sight, one runs the risk of hitting the cliff.

In some cases, one may consider changing jobs to get away from the “dangerous” situation, but can it always go well? Perhaps not; in fact, in situations that we perceive as stressful one of the oldest neural systems that can be activated is the one that urges us to run for our lives. But modern life proposes stressful situations that can last a long time, situations in which the quick attack/escape response we had in front of a lion in the Savannah is no longer functional.

Therefore, we cannot rely on a reaction, but must construct an action that enables us to experience work well-being. It is possible that this action is not simply to “escape” from the current job, but to change the meaning we attach to the job itself, made up of intentions, values and expectations.

A man can survive by feeding on bread alone because it satisfies his physiological need, but man’s ultimate goal is not mere survival.

But, soon, in addition to bread, we crave good food, wine, a certain organization of the meal, a certain presence, conversations, we “desire” a “conviviality”: a communication with others around the table.
As you can see, we move from consumption to communion. We move from the need to eat to the desire to communicate
(Dolto, 1979, p.8).

When we ask “what do I wish from my work?” we leave the sphere of necessity and enter the sphere of possibility. Here then is Francis, who is a bartender, may wish for his job to be an opportunity to chat while customers drink coffee or to provide a place in which to feel at home when having aperitifs with friends. Sara, on the other hand, by being an accountant may wish to follow in her father’s footsteps and make him proud or she may want to invest in a career so as to raise her social status. So if we experience work having identified the engine that drives us we feel more enterprising and more likely to experiment, putting ourselves out there.

If, on the other hand, we are still searching, we can confront an external figure such as a psychologist, who can help us rediscover work as a space in which we can feel fulfilled and where we can experience positive relationships with our colleagues, so that we can experience the collaboration and proactivity that are elements for building well-being. Here then we can change our perspective and we can realize that work remains a source of income, but that money can become the means that allows us to go on vacation with our family or friends.

Moving from a view of the work as need to a view of want is not immediate, just as when one wants to develop an analog photograph there is a need for skill, care, and time to allow the nuances to emerge and shape the complete image.