Oregon Humanities

“Follow your bliss,” acclaimed mythologist and teacher Joseph Campbell said so often. Like so many viewers, I too became captivated by his acclaimed 1988 PBS series, The Power of Myth, convinced that we should not just settle for any work, but identify our “bliss” and pursue it relentlessly.  With all due respect to Campbell, I have come to quite a different understanding of work. I believe that all work is good work, if it is done with integrity and dedication. We can’t all “follow our bliss.” Often it is enough to be working at all, to bring home a paycheck that will keep the lights on and buy a new pair of tennis shoes for a growing child. Work itself, in any form, bestows upon us a sense of dignity and worth.
Too often we have perpetuated the notion that some jobs are inherently better than others, and not just because they are better compensated, although that is part of the equation. Healing jobs are better than jobs in sales; digital jobs better than “blue collar” jobs, and green jobs are better than, well, just about anything! I teach, and confess I do truly love what I do. I am fortunate. But the hardest working individual at my school is Joel, one of our custodians. Each day he pauses briefly from cleaning a window until it shines or sweeping a stairwell clean to greet me and chat briefly. No matter how many times I have told him my name, he begins, “Buenos dias, Maestra.” Maestra, teacher, a title that implies that my position requires a salutation of respect that his does not.  Our school is one of two jobs he holds so that he can support himself and send money back to his family. I cannot imagine he grew up identifying janitorial work as his “bliss,” but he tells me it is good work, though hard on the back sometimes. He is a man of quiet decency, whose efforts should be valued every bit as much as mine.
Certainly the last two years have taught us painful lessons about the power of work in our lives. In its absence our psyches as well as our bank accounts take a terrible beating. “Success is counted sweetest;/By those who ne’er succeed/To comprehend a nectar/ Requires sorest need,” wrote Emily Dickinson. Those “who ne’er succeed,” the chronically unemployed, miss not only the income, but the opportunity to feel individually valued for their contributions, their work.  Their “sorest need” doesn’t have to be their bliss, because all work is good work.

Sara Follen Salvi | 21 Jun at 03:36 PM