Work is Love Made Visible

Career and work make up a significant part of our lives. Over a lifetime, the average person spends 13 years—roughly 90,000 hours—at work¹. To put this in perspective: we spend 26 years sleeping², 19 years in marriage (median duration)³, and only 4 years with friends and family⁴. When you subtract sleep and work from our lives, we're left with merely 17.5 years of truly discretionary time⁵. Work isn't just a way to pay bills; it's one of the defining pillars of human existence.

Yet the stark reality is that many people, if not a silent majority, are dissatisfied with their chosen vocation. Recent surveys reveal that only 30% of workers are satisfied with their pay⁶, just 26% feel satisfied with promotion opportunities ⁷, and a staggering 71% want to change bosses⁸. When we spend such a significant portion of our finite lives working, this dissatisfaction becomes an existential crisis.

This is an excerpt from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (1923), which is in the public domain. You can read the complete book here. I hope it helps you along your journey and provides some additional new perspectives.

Thank you to Gregg Braden for turning me onto Kahlil Gibran.

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Work is Love Made Visible

Then a ploughman said, Speak to us of Work.

     And he answered, saying:


You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons,
and to step out of life's procession,
that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.


When you work you are a flute
through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent,
when all else sings together in unison?


Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work
you fulfil a part of earth's furthest dream,
assigned to you when that dream was born,

And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret.


But if you in your pain call birth an affliction
and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow,
then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow
shall wash away that which is written.


You have been told also life is darkness,
and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.

And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,
     And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
     And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
     And all work is empty save when there is love;


And when you work with love
you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.


And what is it to work with love?

     It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart,
     even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.

     It is to build a house with affection,
     even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.

     It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy,
     even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.

     It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
     And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.



Work is love made visible.



And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste,
it is better that you should leave your work
and sit at the gate of the temple
and take alms of those who work with joy.

For if you bake bread with indifference,
     you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes,
     your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing,
     you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.


~Kahlil Gibran, 1923