Reclaim work as an act of love

For much of our lives, we’re told that work is “necessary” to our existence. We’ve been especially convinced that work is our only source of “money” and that without it, we would not survive in the world. To believe this triggers our self-preservation instincts, which in turn causes us to make choices about work that are rooted in fear and limitation rather than expressions of love and potentiality.

Our trajectory in our work begins the moment we enter school as young children, though we are not  consciously aware of it at the time. We learn to spell, we crunch numbers, we recite facts, we form relationships with our peers – all designed to prepare us to become good “workers”. Soon enough, the career “tracks” begin to be presented to us by our elders. As do their belief systems about work.

When I became old enough to contemplate the act of work, I would observe the adults around me, curious about the nature of their relationship with work. Right away, I noticed a disturbing pattern – a pattern of sacrifice. People would often sacrifice time, both time for themselves and with their loved ones. Some would forgo joy, doing work they didn’t really care about, usually out of obligation. Most would work themselves hard, even to the point of negatively impacting their health. What was strange to me was that these behaviours were not questioned, in fact, they were celebrated. When I verbally challenged these notions of work, I was told, “You don’t have to love your work, you just have to do it.” Even before I entered the workforce, I knew there was something very wrong with that story. Yet, as a young adult, I played along with it, if only for a while.

When I verbally challenged these notions of work, I was told, “You don’t have to love your work, you just have to do it.” Even before I entered the workforce, I knew there was something very wrong with that story.

After multiple stints in post-secondary education, I did the work I was “schooled“ to do for well over a decade. Somewhere along the way, I had abandoned my own inclinations about work and adopted those society deemed as “correct”. I put my head down and did what “productive” humans do – I performed. Any flickering ideas about creating work according to my own beliefs had been stamped out. With hindsight, it’s easy to recognize those acts of self-betrayal that have us winding up down dead-end roads.

Without any real love for the work I was doing, it was inevitable that I became dispirited. My disdain grew to the degree that I questioned the whole point of work. Eventually, the meaninglessness of it all sent me into despair, questioning why I was even alive. And this was the true blessing because that conundrum sent me on a whole new trajectory to discover the work that would reignite my passion for life, what I would later come to call my “inspired work”. This quest required me to expand my entire understanding of the role of work in our lives. My first realization was that it’s difficult to discover the “work you love” if you don’t first love the idea of work itself.

To love work

Without meaning to, many of us use the word “work” disparagingly. We associate it with those activities we don’t want to do. When people tell me they “don’t want to work”, what I hear them saying is “I don’t want to waste my precious life doing things I don’t care to do.” And rightly so. Why would you? However, the act of work contains vast more potentials than the sacrifices we’ve been told we have to make just to earn money. In its expanded form, work is joy, work is creativity, work is abundance. However, work is so much more than words can convey because, ultimately, it is an act of love – toward ourselves and others.

The idea of “love” can have different connotations, depending on the person defining it or the situation. When I speak of love, I mean that which exists in the presence of an open heart, a state which I believe is inherent to our being. It is an unguarded state where we are allowing the wholeness of who we are to attend to the moment. A wordsmith, such as a poet or a songwriter, could certainly articulate this more eloquently than I can, however, I do know how love feels by its warmth, its energetic charge, and its unbounded nature. These are the qualities that indicate to me I am doing work from a place of love.

Love in the context of work is that which exists in the presence of an open heart.

If love is an open-hearted state of existence, our work is an opportunity for us to practice its embodiment. From the passage “On Work” in the book The Prophet, author Kahlil Gibran writes, “Work is love made visible.” In other words, work is the real-world actions we undertake that demonstrate the quality of our in-the-moment connection to our essential nature. To engage with work as an act of love forever changes our relationship with it, and provides the greatest benefit to us and others.

When we love our work, it becomes:

• A spiritual practice devoted to our self-actualization
• An intentional act of care
• A generous sharing of our humanity
• A generative way of sustaining life
• A valuable contribution to society
• An expression of our creative potentials
• A conduit for the expansion of source
• Our chosen form of service

In my own inspired work journey, it was all well and good to expand my understanding of the potentials that work carried, but the next barrier I faced was that I realized to do work I Iove, I must also believe myself to be worthy of love.

Work as an act of love toward ourselves

Each of us is born as a unique incarnation blessed with a range of abilities and capacities that allow us to make our own particular valuable contribution to the whole. Then for a variety of reasons (e.g. outdated education systems, family patterning, generational trauma, etc.), we are systematically taught to diminish our magnificence. “Who do you think you are?” was a common reproach in my childhood household whenever I got a hold of big ideas. We are shown that it’s not safe to be who we are, so we make ourselves small. Then we approach our work as these stunted versions of ourselves. We choose opportunities that are limited because we mistakenly believe that we are limited. But this is a lie. The truth is we are each extraordinary beings. And if we have forgotten this, our work can help us remember.

Our work is a vehicle through which we can come to know, honour, and celebrate the glory of who we are. By holding ourselves with the tender reverence we so deserve and creating opportunities to occupy our wonder, our work becomes a living act of self-love.

To love ourselves in our work is to:

• Know our existence matters
• Value our unique expression
• Perceive ourselves from a state of sufficiency
• Acknowledge our gifts
• Embrace our creative capacities
• Connect with our life-giving source of energy
• Trust our own inner guidance
• Pursue that which enlivens us
• Have faith in the unfolding of life
• Live in alignment with our own truth

Once we begin to accept that we ourselves are worthy of our own love, then our work invites us to make another bold move. We must deem ourselves as worthy of being seen by others in our full expression.

Work as an act of love toward others

Work does not happen in isolation. What classifies any activity as work is that it includes service to another in some form. Of course, that service can take on an infinite variety of expressions, but without others, there is no work. If then, our work requires us to interact with others, and our natural state of being is to be open-hearted, then it’s fairly straightforward to say that our work is a way of conveying love to one another.

Whereas work is an opportunity to know and love ourselves as individuals, it is also an opportunity celebrate and cherish others.

To love another in our work is to:

• Honour their lived experience
• Hold them in a place of belonging
• Connect with them heart-to-heart
• Revel in the beauty of our existence
• Acknowledge their significance
• Permit them to be exactly who they are
• Offer our gifts in service to them
• Receive their gifts in service to us
• Harmonize in creative collaboration
• Serve the expansion of all that is

Work as an act of love puts us in right relationship with ourselves and each other. It is the best use of our humanity.

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Contrary to popular belief, love does not require sacrifice. Nor does our work. It requires that everyone involved is dedicated to living from a truthful, open-hearted state of being. In this state, we are receptive to the unbounded possibilities that allow for everyone to be who they are, create what they are here to create, and live the life they want to live without compromise.

To work is to make our most precious contribution, it is our way to permeate the world with our love. And our joy, our bliss, and our passion are the indicators that we have reclaimed our work as an act of love – toward life itself.