From the moment God threw Adam's sorry butt out of Eden, we've been toiling at work -- in the fields, the farms, the factories, and now the cubicles. More than half our waking hours are spent driving to it, slaving over it, escaping from it, but despite the frustration, worry and stress, we still do it. Work is the price we pay to live "the good life."

The good life? To borrow a phrase from Woody Allen, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.” If I'm going to work for a living, I want a have a life worth working for.

Derived from the Indo-European root werg-on, the word work means "to do or act.” The Germans called it werk, signifying "action and performance.” And the French used the word, travail, from the Old Latin tripalium, an instrument of torture composed of three stakes. Travail is defined as both "exceedingly hard work" and "intense pain and agony."

Intense pain and agony? An instrument of torture? No wonder so many people hate their jobs. God help us.

Flash back in time to eighth century BC.  You're journeying throughout the Aegean with Odysseus, Homer's epic hero.  Work is happily accepted by everyone, nobles as well as commoners. Odysseus boasts that he can cut grass with a scythe, drive a pair of oxen, and plow a clean furrow. Can you do all that? Talk about multi-tasking!

By 776 BC, people become much less epic-heroic, seeing work as a curse and nothing else. They believe the gods hated mankind and out of spite, condemned them to toil, even so far as suggesting that the gods were so displeased with men that they buried food under the earth. Where are Odysseus and those oxen when you really need them?

Instead, we are greeted by Plato and Aristotle feeding more cynicism into the mix. Aristotle postulates, "To perfect a skill is to be stricken with a bent of mind.” Plato agrees, saying, "Those who need to work must be willing to accept an inferior status.” This, in turn, inspires Aristotle to pronounce, "woman may be said to be an inferior man.  "Geez, if he were around today, he could be running Wal-Mart!

This aristocratic philosophy breeds centuries of contempt for work, until the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, when Luther and Calvin put forth slightly more optimistic judgments. Luther declares work less as punishment and more a duty or calling, believing that you should work within the confines and according to the traditions of the trade or profession into which you're born. In other words, you should "play the cards you're dealt."

But Calvin, more the social climber, thinks it's unworthy to remain satisfied with your station in life. Praising diligence, industry and hard work, he considers profit to be a sign of God's blessing. It’s this thinking that lays the groundwork for the protestant work ethic, embodied in the principles of the American Dream.

But wouldn't you know it? Just as we're beginning to develop a more positive outlook, along comes Adam Smith with Adam Ferguson (neither falling too far from the tree of the original Adam) with a theory of work based on a division of labor. They segment work into blocks of time, called jobs, in which the human mind is contracted to do repetitive, monotonous tasks.

The word job traces its origins to the Celtic gob, meaning "a pile of something," as in "take this pile of something and shove it.” But the job sticks and with it, words like bargaining and boycotting, sweatshops and strikes. Labor organizations arise and laws are enacted, institutionalizing a movement built on dissatisfaction with the job.

Although labor unions have less influence on our work today, the ethos remains. We have the opportunity to choose the work we want to do, but often choose work for which we have no real passion. We expend 50-60 hours or more per week to get ahead, putting in time now so we can enjoy "the good life" later, delaying gratification until a time when we won't need to work anymore.

Living "the good life" shouldn't be some distant dream. It needs to be a day-by-day commitment to achieving the quality of life you want now. Your work is a reflection of your own values. What you do and the amount of time you spend doing it are choices you make.

So if you want your employer to recognize that you have a life outside of work, you have to start by recognizing that fact yourself. Change jobs, find ways to work less, plow a clean furrow, whatever you need to do -- just do something. Because if you just breeze through life only waiting for good things to happen, you may just step into a pile of something!  

© 2004, Career Planning and Management, Inc., Boston, MA.  All rights reserved.