Love and Work

I recently picked up a copy of philosopher Alain de Botton's non-fiction book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work and was enthralled after the first page. It was one of the those rare moments when, after having finished page three, I realized what I had in my possession and froze in wonderment with the book poised between my hands. I gazed gobsmacked into the middle distance for a few minutes, contemplating the impact of the opening paragraphs. Then I looked around to see if anyone had noticed my excitement. I wanted to consume the book, bury my face in its open pages, or rub it against my cheek like something furry.
The tome is concerned with "what makes work both one of the most exciting and most painful of all our activities". The first chapter, which had the biggest effect on me, dealt with logistics: Alain visited ports and warehouse facilities and reported on the enormity and anonymity of cargo. I don't believe many of us think about cargo that much, but it's literally everywhere around us, being transported hither and thither like blood through veins and arteries. De Botton quietly observed the steadfast guardians of a London port receiving ships on gray, misty mornings, clipboards in hand; followed tuna from where it was caught and beaten to death by fishermen in a small boat the Maldives, to where it was consumed by a young English boy in his home.
For the first ten years of my life, I grew up adjacent to a railway line, picking wild blackberries at the end of our back garden. We used to wave at the trains when they passed. We were so close we could see hats, hair, sometimes-sleepy eyes placidly returning our stares with bemusement as they flashed by. Immediately behind the railway line was an imposing, windowless brick warehouse and I would stare at it blankly every day, never thinking to ask what went on inside. This backdrop of my formative years affected me in ways that I had never realized before. I've never been on a plane without peering out of the window and speculating on what those baggage handlers might have had for breakfast or whether they were nursing a hangover and how fit they must be, nonchalantly tossing suitcases from cart to cargo hold.
I must be the only person I know who loves airports, trains, planes and journeying in general. I have thousands of photographic images of runways, planes, bridges, buses, cars: photographs taken through windows of all kinds, within and without. I'm obsessed with civil engineering and regularly consult with my treasured 25 year-old polaroid of Stonehenge. Now that was life's work.















Although, now that we have terrorists sticking bombs in their rectums in order to blow up planes, I'm seriously reconsidering whether I need to travel as much as I do. De Botton asks us to consider, when we buy something, how far it has come and this is a relevant subject for our times. How often do we think about the lives of the people manning our ports and borders? In a later chapter, he observes that it takes five thousand people in one famous English biscuit company all their working lives to make biscuits from initial concept to final marketing: the sort of snacks that we could bake ourselves in one afternoon. I pondered, as de Botton may have intended, that if we all baked our own biscuits on a lazy Sunday, where would these people work?
In the other chapters of the book, de Botton follows an electricity power line from a nuclear power station to London on foot with a pylon enthusiast; meets an artist who has devoted five years of his life to painting the same 250 year old tree in hundreds of settings; witnesses a satellite burst from the jungle into orbit, juxtaposing the very old with the very new; follows an accountant from bed to desk and beyond. It's a fascinating exploration of work in all its forms and, essentially ten windows into other worlds.
Then, co-incidentally, over at Consciously Frugal last week, I chanced upon an inspirational blog post called Product Human which touches on the fundamental nature of work by describing the epidemic of self-branding. This current epidemic, mostly these days called "networking" or "pushing my home-made jewelry on my friends", is an attempt to regain control of one's direction and purpose instead of relinquishing it to a large faceless corporation. CF's "product human" is not dissimilar to the concept of bartering. Back in the ancient day, we would support our families and communities by trading and exchanging goods and services. The "regular ol' job" as CF puts it is a concept which fundamentally stops us from being able to take care of ourselves in the traditional sense. A regular job stops us from having time to grow our own food, pickle, can, make jam, keep bees and animals, make our own clothing or ply an independent trade. In the course of my research into the economy these days, I've noted that many of us are getting back to basics in order to regain some control over our lives in a time when business that are "too big to fail" seem to be the only winners in a game we no longer want to play. It's never been so fashionable in New York to be a farmer! Forget entertainment, we have people keeping bees, small farms and animals on their roofs in New York City. Friends have agreed that in ten years' time every building here will have a garden of some sort.
If I can buy something from a friend to support them during these times, I'll do it. Let's mix love and work! I've read that in the last year more small businesses have been started as more of us become unemployed and I can't help but think this is a great thing that is happening to us: a pivotal moment.
As we pass the first birthday of Bush's economic "recovery" plan when he effectively nationalized his first corporation, my original fears for the economy have been smothered by the emergence of the online frugal community: good people plugging into a network to assist others in their community to get out of debt free or keep their job or start a business. The frugal community, as I call it, is doing what the green movement did ten years ago, when it realized that the government still did not believe in global warming. Its members are acting upon the downturn themselves, by being wiser with their earnings and eschewing unnecessary consumption. I believe that in the future more of us will work part-time or have our own businesses and grow our own food in an effort to gain autonomy of purpose instead of specializing in a full-time job. There is no such thing as job security and to put all your eggs in one basket by devoting all your time to one employer is more of a risk now than it ever has been.