Simple questions about loving our work

Old wisdom from the stoics and a potent metaphor for the love of work

Do you love your work the way a dancer loves dancing and a painter loves painting? If not, why is your work less important to you than theirs is to them?

— Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations: An Emperor’s Guide to Mastery

Work that is enjoyable becomes a passion. Today, we do not optimize for passion in the workplace. Departments compete to dump work on one another while musicians in the orchestra hold onto their part to perfect it.

To salvage the waning sense of love for what we do, companies create retreats and buy Foosball tables for the cafeteria. All things inherently not about the work at all. Inversely, artists and musicians increase their love for what they do by watching masterful representations of it at the museum and theatre.