Like everyone else in America these days, I’ve been thinking about work. Since I’m not an economist- and I don’t even understand economics well enough to have an informed opinion- I can’t offer an opinion about the economic stimulus package. But I have noticed a considerable deficit in another work-related area. The layoffs, downsizing, uncertainty and pervasive experience of insufficiency have led workers at all levels, in all fields to experience an existential crisis. This isn’t the stuff of college sophomores having late-night bull sessions. It’s the real experience I’ve encountered in clients, colleagues, and friends: who am I now? We all identify with our work and our work is a big part of our identities.
Work gives people a title, a public face that’s shorthand which allows others to recognize their skills, their way of contributing to society. Work is our way of having a conversation with the world. “Ah”, someone says. “You’re the principal at my daughter’s school. You know I really appreciated the way you handled this and that but I want to share my concerns about….” When a job is lost or changed, when a hoped for promotion is put on hold or someone else gets the job that shorthand gets short-circuited. Who am I now that I’m not what I used to be?
The money stimulus is important. The economic crisis has generated job losses in every sector and at every level and people need income to meet basic needs of food and shelter. The other crisis is less easily addressed. Blows to the work self, work-based identity are hard to take. At the same time, that unsettling opens up cracks that invite peering behind heretofore closed walls. The demands of a job shape us, pull attention and energy away from inner life to make payment on the material markers of success. When a job is lost, a title and identity taken away, we are required to look inward again. We can take stock honestly, without the veils that obscure desires and intuitions. The person that goes forward to once again meet the world is changed; perhaps more transparent, stronger in the knowledge that behind the nameplate on a desk someone worth knowing is really and enduringly there.
