“As a society, we have put our belief in two great ideas: work and romantic love. Historically, our faith in these grew up together. We started to believe that you should marry for love at roughly the same time as we started to think that you could work not only for money, but also for self-fulfillment. These are two beautiful ideals, but they are also infinitely demanding. It is hard to go for long without hitting a crisis in one or other field—and feeling very much like a failure for doing so.”
Alain de Botton talks to the WSJ about his latest book The Joys and Sorrows of Work. Usually I’m not drawn to anything by the author, because he writes about human interests, like love and happiness, without acknowledging basic human nature. But this time he makes an interesting point.
The dominant idea is that work should be romantic, it should be an act of love. This might be a pre-recession belief. Mike Rowe gave an amazing talk at TED that already illustrates a change of spirit – identify opportunities or blue oceans is better advice than follow your passion.
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