The Good Men Project

Men at Work

I’ve always found it ironic that the acknowledgement of the Labor Day holiday is celebrated by a day off from the very thing we are holding in high esteem. Honoring work by not working? Seems like the best way to venerate this day would be to put in a hard 8, 10 or 12 hours of work, not by relaxing at the beach, grilling up a plateful of burgers or wieners, or nursing a cold glass of lemonade as you sit poolside and watch summer fade into the cool clutches of autumn.

No topic is more incendiary than man and work, clearly dividing us into two camps. Those who love their job and accept the fact that it may occupy far too many hours of your life; robbing them of important time spent with friends, family, or the pursuit of a life outside of work? Those who put up with the 2,000 pound gorilla in the room that is essential to survival and its ability to provide life’s basics such as food, hearth and home. Not to mention a new car every five years, an occasional vacation, college fund, the capacity to send your dress shirts out for laundering every week, and overall financial well-being.

There is a myth about the dying man saying how much he regretted spending too much time at the office and removed from those things that truly mattered to him in life, and encouraging his son not to fall prey to the same pitfalls that left this man mostly unfulfilled at the end of his life. “Nobody wishes they had spent more time at work,” so goes the final deathbed words of this fictitious man. Now, counter that with my father’s yearning that he had been more active during the last years of his life; even up until the end.

Not unlike many workers who reach the age of 65 and are eased into retirement, my father found himself with few available work options to continue his career and stay busy and fulfilled. He had been a high school educated blue-collar machinist all his life which left him with few skills adaptable to the evolving work force of the 1980s-90s when he accepted mandatory retirement. Once a robust man of great physical strength and unquenchable desire for whatever unknown was around the next corner, he began to shrink and was mostly forgotten. There was no place for him at his old job or any similar position despite his ability to perform, and he was forced to acquiesce to the only “career” option that appears to be available to many aging workers; accepting a small little part-time job bagging groceries. A once towering man had become almost invisible by his inability to work.

His greatest personal disappointment was not remaining active at work – or not being allowed to do so – and I recall the many conversations we had during those last years when he talked about what he had lost by not working. Unlike the man who regrets the time spent at work, my father instructed me in the importance of work and how it validates and defines our existence. And I agree.

His words reminded of the Marge Piercy poem “To Be of Use” in which she writes:

“Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums,
But you know they were meant to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real.”

My father, and many like him who yearned to be used, were like the empty museum pieces that were made to carry and be used; not to be put on a shelf and watched.

Besides family, working is the one thing that injects the truest meaning into our lives. It not only offers monetary fulfillment, but also gives our life structure, and helps create self-worth. At work, an employee performs a much-needed task, whether CEO or night cleaning person; and if each job is not performed, a business will not operate successfully.

Men have come under fire in recent years for putting career in front of the development of a personal life. Selfish, myopic and insensitive are a few of the descriptive terms used to depict what I feel is only a man’s instinctive pursuit of that which perhaps makes him a man. No disrespect to family, the cultivation of friends and building a life outside of work, but it is work that drives us as a gender. Want a barometer of how we feel about our jobs and careers, and its place in our lives. Don’t ask us our thoughts after we’ve put in an 18-hour day crunching on deadlines, or pushed a tractor trailer from Saginaw to Worcester on snowy highways, or filled in on the nightly cleaning crew that you normally supervise because one of your workers called in sick at the last minute. No, better to ask a man his feelings about work when he doesn’t have any. After the factory closes, or your company is downsized and jobs are eliminated. This is when that man – who is staying home as his wife, friends, and colleagues all go to work – will feel the sting of job loss and the death of their sense of self.

I’m not lobbying for all work and no play. Don’t want to make us all dull boys. No, a career and life outside of work (whether you are married with kids, or single) are equally important and should comfortably intersect, and not run at odds with one another. Both are life-long pursuits that fuel the other. I know that I am happiest at my job when I feel that time spent with family or pursuing avocational pastimes are fulfilling and rewarding. The converse is true and I seem to have a better time with my family during those times when I am “kickin’ butt” at work. My advice to all men is never to stop working. I’ll give you Labor Day. After all, everyone deserves a break now and then to re-fuel; even men. But use the time off to re-focus and set your personal compass to the one thing that characterizes us as men. We are workers; all of us.

And as you do it, consider more advice from poet Marge Piercy, who nailed it when she wrote:

“I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.”