Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many,
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
TS Elliot
Does this feel like you as you return to work and the regular demands of life? I recently came across this poem, and it resonated with how I have felt at times returning to a hated job that I was nonetheless obliged to do.
But ‘hated’ seems too strong and passionate a word for the indifferent mediocrity of the commuting workers Elliot’s poem seems to imply. This type of routine, he seems to say, is a type of death, a deadening indifference to the aliveness of the world, and perhaps a commentary on the crushing bureaucracy of modernity and the industrial system of his day.
Such a system appears to grind on regardless of its occupant’s needs, or desires, or even willingness to contribute. It almost seems like a masquerade, a performative going through the motions required to demonstrate conformity and competence.
Needless to say it is the antithesis of joyful living.
The economy of today is different to that of Elliot. It is more fluid and flexible, allowing (some) people to work from home for example. But it is no less demanding or capricious a God. Say to an Amazon delivery driver or ‘fulfilment centre’ picker if he has the flexibility to work from home and he would laugh in your face.
In such circumstances is joy in work even possible?
This is where the person-centred credo of subjective fulfilment through the development of an individual’s skills and gifts comes unstuck. The System doesn’t care about your personal development. If it offers you personal fulfilment it does so incidentally.
This is where quotes such as that below can be challenging:
“You too have unique talents, a calling to enact, challenges to face, rewards to treasure, obstacles to overcome and a Self to become. Your job in this life is not to try to shape yourself into some idealised versior of yourself, but to find out who you already are ‘in embryo’ and then become that individual in full.”
If this individuation is possible through the structures of contemporary capitalism is an open question. But I am sure if more people were happier in their jobs and work, the world would be a much happier and more joyful place.
This is part of the transformation we need.
By Damian J. Hursey
Joy in Enough 