Looking for a job, looking for love

[aelf]

I get that people have different aims when they look for jobs and when they look for love. My question is: Why is that difference still entrenched by our perceptions and our cultural discourses on love and work?

Consider this: Well-known columnist David Brooks wrote in an article for the New York Times (http://tinyurl.com/88gl959) that young people should not "pursue happiness and joy" when trying to decide their career paths, focusing instead on solving the problems they come across and seeking fulfilment through "[engaging] their tasks". On the other hand, David Brooks wrote in his book The Social Animal that "The relationship between money and happiness is very tenuous; the relationship between personal bonds and happiness is incredibly strong". So we are told that happiness matters in our personal relationships but not in our jobs.

Why the difference in attitudes? How much time do we spend at our workplaces every day versus the time we spend socialising? How many friends do we see every day for durations that come anywhere close to the amount of time we spend at work? Why does happiness not matter in something that forms a significantly larger proportion of our everyday lives?

The only relationship we have with people that can come close to the relationship we have with our jobs, in terms of the time and commitment that we have to invest in it as working adults, is the serious romantic relationship. We might say that it's difficult and even unbearable to be in a serious relationship with someone you don't love, having to see him or her everyday and to pretend that, deep down, you care about the person first and foremost. So why do some us think we can do it when it comes to our jobs?

As we are probably well aware, it comes down to different motivations. It is not that happiness matters in our personal relationships and not in our jobs to begin with; it's that a lot of the time we look for happiness in our personal relationships but not in our jobs. That is quite understandable. Work occupies that space between our public and private spheres of life where necessity and practical considerations dominate. In other words, the primary reason we work is to earn a living, and we don't often have much of a choice in that.

But then why do we, of our own volition, set up a teleological barrier between work and personal relationships? Why do we judge people who enter into personal relationships out of purely material concerns? Why are people who work purely for money normal but those who seek partners for material reasons deplorable?

You might put the difference in attitudes down to a matter of frequency and significance. Serious relationships are more significant because they are harder to come by, whereas one can switch job relatively easily. But what difference would there be if we keep looking for jobs without putting much weight on how much we love them? Working for purely practical reasons wouldn't therefore be a temporary arrangement.

Or you might put it down to a matter bad faith. Normally, people enter into personal relationships on the understanding that it is mostly, in a strict sense of the word, personal. In other words, as we see it, personal relationships concern our persons and not so much external material things. So in letting the latter take precedence, you would often be breaking a tacitly made contract.

Yet these days many jobs ask for passion and a degree of personal commitment that justifies the personal sacrifices that we have to make, often for no tangible compensation, in order to perform our tasks. We can no longer be assembly line workers who perform mechanical tasks while waiting for the working day to end so that we can be free to live our own lives after that. The discourse on work-life balance is increasingly making way for the discourse on work-life integration. The job is no longer something that you have to get over and done with out of necessity; it's very much a part of you as a person. It demands to be so. Thus, if we put on fronts in our jobs, aren't we similarly lying to our employers and maybe to ourselves?

So, in light of the changes in the way we live and work, is the sacred teleological divide between jobs and personal relationships defensible? Can we still say with certainty that we have to love our partners but we do not have to love our jobs?

Ma Nuo, a Chinese reality show contestant, was famously blasted by the public for stating, on the topic of life partners, that she "would rather cry in the back of a BMW than laugh on the back of a bicycle". But wouldn't many of us rather cry in the back office of Goldman Sachs than laugh behind the counter of a café? What makes us sure that that is better than Ma Nuo's view on relationships?

 

[stormerne]

Pursuing happiness in a job is futile. One might feel valued and a sense of satisfaction or pride, but it's fragile and ephemeral. Relying on anything (or anyone) for happiness is a recipe for dependence that will bring suffering. That doesn't mean you can't enjoy these things and bring enjoyment to others: you most certainly can. But can you maintain happiness through all the hard and painful times? Yes, but only if you're not attached to those things and your source of happiness relies on something that won't let you down.

That said, it's often easier to change a job than a relationship. Most people have far more jobs in their lifetimes than marriages or serious relationships. One is more of a transaction than the other, but that may be just current culture and convention. With a job, even one that demands passion and commitment, you rarely have to expose your deeper self (in fact doing so may get in the way and be discouraged). By contrast, a marriage or serious relationship where there are lies or secrets will sooner or later be doomed.

And personally speaking, bicycle or BMW, back office or café - it doesn't matter to me! Material ease is pleasant, as is a loving relationship, as well as freedom from illness and pain. But if you can be happy no matter what life brings, and no matter how successful or otherwise your strivings, then your pursuing has been in the right direction and you have true happiness.

 

[aelf]

That's missing the point. I'm not asking how you think we can find happiness. But, anyway, yes, you can potentially find happiness no matter what, but it's not true (obviously) that you will find happiness no matter what. We know some things will make us unhappy - that's why we avoid them and actively look for things that will make us happy instead. If you think it's useless to try and avoid unhappiness and it's better to be happy with whatever circumstances we happen to face, then why not just do anything and let anything happen as long as it doesn't kill us? But that would clearly be silly. This is not something that is in dispute, I hope?

However, what I'm asking is why we think that happiness matters in our personal relationships but not in our jobs. You're saying that that's the case because we can more easily switch jobs than switch partners. But what difference would that make if we find other jobs without really putting happiness in the equation?

 

[stormerne]

Clearly - to me at least - it's possible to be happy no matter what external circumstances occur. Naturally we try to avoid unpleasantness, but even in the midst of unpleasantness we can still be happy. But unpleasantness is not the same as unhappiness; after all we can still taste food with an unpleasant flavor without losing our happiness! There is no sense in seeking out painful experiences but there is also no sense in being unhappy if painful experiences cannot be avoided. You do not avoid unhappiness by avoiding particular circumstances; you avoid unhappiness by basing your happiness on something other than circumstances. You can indeed "be happy with whatever circumstances you happen to face", but just letting let anything happen would hardly be a positive contribution to your work or personal relationships would it?

I haven't put happiness in the equation when seeking jobs. In the 15 or so jobs I've had in my long career, I may have considered pleasantness in the equation but not happiness. Provided I had the ability to do the job well, it was more a question of whether it paid well enough. That meant I was notoriously difficult to manage because bosses had little control over my motivation since I was already self-reliant.

In a personal relationship you have a more obvious opportunity to put someone else before your self, someone you're around most of the non-working time. (Of course you have that same opportunity outside a relationship but it can feel less immediate.) Yet should happiness be something you seek in a relationship? Conventional wisdom might say yes, but if you're dependent for your happiness on that relationship being a good one all the time then chances are you'll be let down, at least some of the time, or you will end up compromising (as so many do). Yet again it's possible to be happy whatever a relationship brings. So you might ask again, why bother? Because a harmonious loving relationship is much more pleasant, facilitates many things, provides more opportunities, and it wastes less valuable time and energy than a less harmonious one - time that, once spent, you will never get back. So it's good to go for a good relationship, but it's also good to avoid basing your happiness on that relationship.

 

[dusters]

I treat love and job equally. And I like Stormerne's point - what I read form that is a perspective that it's perception what matters.

 

[GoodGame]

What I look for in a job: money, career development, locality that job is at, and fringe benefits.

What I look for in love: companionship, gratification, friendship, and maybe offspring.

 

[asbestos]

People should treat love like getting a job. After 20 years that's pretty much what you'll end up with anyway.

 

[Traitorfish]

Very interesting OP. My first reaction, because I am tediously Marxian, would be that we construct this divide because we experience work as a commercial transaction, the exchange of labour for money, which means that our relationship to our work and our employers is mediated by commodities, rather than existing directly between individuals as with a romantic relationship- or, for that matter, between an individual and the activity, as you might find in a hobby or recreational sport. This creates a natural disparity between our private lives, which are our own, and our work lives, which we rent out to others, to do with as they will.

But I'm not sure that's a sufficient explanation, especially given how many jobs, as you say, appear to demand an increasing level of personal investment. It can't always be understood as a simple case of "renting yourself out", because you may well be asked to take a level of personal involvement that has historically been reserved for a limited professional stratum. I suppose you could describe that as a yet more advanced stage in the subsumption of labour under capital, a level at which capital not only demands our working lives but our lives as such, but that seems almost like too easy an answer. Almost a non-answer, in fact, a way of not having to explain it.

So, tl;dr, I think it's to a certain extent natural that waged employees feel a distance between their working life and their personal life, but I don't know how to explain the maintenance of the distinction when the two are becoming progressively integrated. (Perhaps the integration isn't possible, we just haven't reached breaking point yet?) Definitely something to think about.

 

[Narz]

People should treat love like getting a job. After 20 years that's pretty much what you'll end up with anyway.

That's pretty cynical. You speak from experience?

Love is worth more than a job. If you put time into love you become better for it (and hopefully build a strong bond), whereas in a job you could get fired at any point.

I suppose your lover could leave you at any point but interpersonal/relationship skills will always translate whereas job skills may not.

 

[asbestos]

That's pretty cynical. You speak from experience?

No. It was entirely in jest.

 

[Shaihulud]

A job is a transaction, where you work at a "job" and you get a tangible pay-off called the salary. The salary should commensurate for the unpleasantness of your job. Obviously people have different expectations of what is their due and of what constitutes unpleasantness. Personally I find a sufficient amount of salary to overcome many levels of unpleasantness.

 

[GenMarshall]

I place more value on getting a job than finding love. The reason is mainly a job gives me a purpose in life and gain self confidence and respect. Not to mention getting money. Love takes a back burner when I am unemployed because I have a feeling that women will reject me if they know I don't have a job.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I think what this OP is concerned with is the relationship of "end in itself" and "merely a tool". The former stands for personal relationships. It stands for the idea that we seek private personal relationships not as a tool to got something which lies beyond such an relationship, but only for what the relationship itself has to offer: companionship, trust, love etc... The latter stands for the work-relationship, where the work is only a tool to create/get something - that doesn't have to be money (while it often is) - but it has to be something exterior that determines the success of the work-relationship, something that does lie beyond.

Now, can work be an end in itself, too? Something we do because we just like doing the work? Sure. It surely also may improve work efficiency and hence may be sought as a desirable quality on the job market.
And can we use relationships as a tool for some exterior use? Like financial security? Again, sure and often enough, at least later in the life that seems to be a part of it.

However, is a personal relationship functional on the long run which is only a tool? Can a work relationship economically survive on its own which solely rests on the pleasure of doing it? It is not impossible, but hardly, because it basically means to stop thinking economically and it means that the personal relationship is distressing. The counter-scenarios to those are much more viable.

And because of this, this "sacred teleological divide" is not just a cultural phenomena, it in part is the logical consequence of what defines personal and work-relationships. This divide may soften or may get more stiff, it is a description of tendencies and not dictations. But because of the nature of our emotional needs and the nature of economic life, it will persist in some form.

 

[Ayn Rand]

Working for happiness is nice and all, but what happens when the market changes, or your job role changes, or you need to re-train, or you get a new manager who is a tool, or your company closes down and you're made redundant...?

The economy is a demanding and constantly changing place. You can set yourself up for a sweetspot job and maybe it will be great for 2-3 years or perhaps longer but it won't last forever, and then when it changes and you don't like it, what are you going to do? If you have invested personal feelings then how will you roll with change and adapt to it?

[Not to mention the difficulties, setbacks and other pressures of work that are inevitable even in the best of jobs.]


Methinks the OP is asking too much - do your job professionally and with realistic expectations. Understand why the process works the way it does, rather than trying to achieve certain fixed and unrealistic goals that won't last in a changing economy.


tl;dr Life is tough, so suck it up and deal with it.

 

[aelf]

Clearly - to me at least - it's possible to be happy no matter what external circumstances occur. Naturally we try to avoid unpleasantness, but even in the midst of unpleasantness we can still be happy. But unpleasantness is not the same as unhappiness; after all we can still taste food with an unpleasant flavor without losing our happiness! There is no sense in seeking out painful experiences but there is also no sense in being unhappy if painful experiences cannot be avoided. You do not avoid unhappiness by avoiding particular circumstances; you avoid unhappiness by basing your happiness on something other than circumstances. You can indeed "be happy with whatever circumstances you happen to face", but just letting let anything happen would hardly be a positive contribution to your work or personal relationships would it?

That simply flies in the face of existing research on economic well-being. Up to a certain point, happiness is correlated with material wealth. Below that point, an increase in material wealth increases happiness, while a decrease in material wealth decreases happiness. That is some strong evidence for the fact that happiness is to some extent influenced by external circumstances.

Of course, if you take the analysis to another level, it might ultimately just be about expectations. But since expectations are to a large extent socially constituted, you are not in complete control of your expectations and are therefore not at full liberty to set your expectations according to your wishes.

Very interesting OP. My first reaction, because I am tediously Marxian, would be that we construct this divide because we experience work as a commercial transaction, the exchange of labour for money, which means that our relationship to our work and our employers is mediated by commodities, rather than existing directly between individuals as with a romantic relationship- or, for that matter, between an individual and the activity, as you might find in a hobby or recreational sport. This creates a natural disparity between our private lives, which are our own, and our work lives, which we rent out to others, to do with as they will.

But I'm not sure that's a sufficient explanation, especially given how many jobs, as you say, appear to demand an increasing level of personal investment. It can't always be understood as a simple case of "renting yourself out", because you may well be asked to take a level of personal involvement that has historically been reserved for a limited professional stratum. I suppose you could describe that as a yet more advanced stage in the subsumption of labour under capital, a level at which capital not only demands our working lives but our lives as such, but that seems almost like too easy an answer. Almost a non-answer, in fact, a way of not having to explain it.

So, tl;dr, I think it's to a certain extent natural that waged employees feel a distance between their working life and their personal life, but I don't know how to explain the maintenance of the distinction when the two are becoming progressively integrated. (Perhaps the integration isn't possible, we just haven't reached breaking point yet?) Definitely something to think about.

I think what this OP is concerned with is the relationship of "end in itself" and "merely a tool". The former stands for personal relationships. It stands for the idea that we seek private personal relationships not as a tool to got something which lies beyond such an relationship, but only for what the relationship itself has to offer: companionship, trust, love etc... The latter stands for the work-relationship, where the work is only a tool to create/get something - that doesn't have to be money (while it often is) - but it has to be something exterior that determines the success of the work-relationship, something that does lie beyond.

Now, can work be an end in itself, too? Something we do because we just like doing the work? Sure. It surely also may improve work efficiency and hence may be sought as a desirable quality on the job market.
And can we use relationships as a tool for some exterior use? Like financial security? Again, sure and often enough, at least later in the life that seems to be a part of it.

However, is a personal relationship functional on the long run which is only a tool? Can a work relationship economically survive on its own which solely rests on the pleasure of doing it? It is not impossible, but hardly, because it basically means to stop thinking economically and it means that the personal relationship is distressing. The counter-scenarios to those are much more viable.

And because of this, this "sacred teleological divide" is not just a cultural phenomena, it in part is the logical consequence of what defines personal and work-relationships. This divide may soften or may get more stiff, it is a description of tendencies and not dictations. But because of the nature of our emotional needs and the nature of economic life, it will persist in some form.

These are the only two posts that understood the OP, which critiques the cultural entrenchment of the teleological divide between love and career. The other posts either simply reiterate the fact that we have different aims or are under mistaken impression that the point of the OP is to say that we should look for jobs that we love.

I might respond to them in more detail later, if I can think of anything interesting to say. I just want to point out that you guys are on the right track.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

These are the only two posts that understood the OP

Yayyy
To quote another not so distant thread "We are intellectuals"

 

[Zelig]

These are the only two posts that understood the OP

That's because it's unnecessarily long and difficult to read.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Don't feel bad, I am sure deep down in your heart you are an intellectual, too.

 

[aelf]

That's because it's unnecessarily long and difficult to read.

I didn't write to please you so I don't care if you found it long and difficult to read. I certainly didn't expect otherwise.

 

[Zelig]

I didn't write to please you so I don't care if you found it long and difficult to read. I certainly didn't expect otherwise.

If I find it difficult to read, you've got a problem with your writing.