CHAPTER 16
Legacy Theme 4
My Life’s Work

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” —CONFUCIUS

Most of us work to live; the lucky ones live to work. Those who are fortunate enough have discovered their passion and made it their life’s work. Whether doctors, teachers, ironworkers, homemakers, or any one of a thousand other job titles, we spend a significant part of our lives building a career or earning money to support a family lifestyle. Many people change careers over time. Others stay with the same job for decades. Less fortunate people may have to balance two, sometimes three, jobs. Many times, volunteer work is a person’s most important legacy. In one form or another, the work we do defines who we are. It helps create and sustain many of our life values. What is the story of your work and career life?

Probing Questions

Take time to review the following questions. Each serves as a clarifying point that dips into your mind’s recesses and helps you access long-forgotten memories. Some questions will resonate more than others. Allow one or two of them to serve as the basis for your thematic story or lead you to other observations that can power the narrative. Keep in mind that they are just guidelines.

1. When you were young, did you dream about what you wanted to be when you became an adult? Did you follow that dream? What became your life’s work? How did you enter that field, and who influenced your decision?
2. Where a person lives may have a strong influence on the jobs and education available. Did your place of residence affect your career choice?
3. We devote time and energy to our work, but we also receive benefits other than monetary ones. What have been the greatest benefits from your chosen field of work? What have been the greatest challenges?
4. Many people hold a series of jobs over the course of their life. If you have worked at several jobs, which one did you find the most rewarding? Which one was the least rewarding?
5. Particularly in earlier decades, gender played a strong role in the careers open to women as compared to men. Did gender affect your choice of career? Were there positive and negative influences?
6. Did your life’s work take you on one long, continuous journey, or did it involve a series of stops and starts? Did you like your work?
7. What primary motivators attracted you to your major life’s work? Passion, power, money, service to community, proximity to home, less stress, responsibility?
8. How did your life’s work make you a better person? What are you most proud of accomplishing through your work?
9. Did you have a mentor who helped you with your career? What recommendations would you give to someone interested in pursuing the work you perform?
10. If you could, would you do it all over again? What changes would you make?

Student Excerpt: My Life’s Work

Work means different things to everyone. Some may feel that their life’s work lies in their professional field, while others find it in the volunteer sector. Some, like Bonnie Bernell, feel that their entire life is their life’s work.

I = work. I work. I work a lot. I value work. I have judgments about people who don’t work. By that I mean those who are not productive. Productive, produce something. Do something. Learn something. Contribute something. People who hang out full time seem bad or wrong somehow. I know that part of my judgment is that I am not so good at hanging out, being still. I also know that stillness for me can be and has been good when I have let myself do it. I get clarity. I am creative from a place of stillness. I can feel good. I am not still very often, not often enough.

I have always worked, it seems. I worked in my father’s medical office. I took typing and Gregg and Pitman shorthand at twelve or thirteen and worked when I was a high school student. I have had tons of jobs. I was a page at a Federal Reserve Bank. I sold Avon door to door, was a terrible secretary, and had an exhausting stint as a waitress in a fraternity for medical students at the University of Wisconsin (on a dare and a hope to meet guys). I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do. I dropped out of college multiple times—probably five, at least—because playing and drinking (which I haven’t done in forty years) took over. I found psychology, or it found me. I was trying to work out my life. I had always loved art but knew, from the deepest place in my soul, that I had to be able to take care of myself financially and in every other way. No one else was going to be there for me, period.

I didn’t ever think I was very smart, but I knew I worked hard. I had a catering business, wrote a book, taught graduate students, do therapy and all its aspects. Lots of jobs. I like to work. I like the feeling of having a place to go, a thing to do, a way to contribute, a means of helping people, at times. I always have projects, too. Lots of projects. I am best when I am immersed in some idea that I am exploring, creating, developing, marketing, and imagining, when I know that what I do makes the world a bit better because I did what I did.

—Bonnie Bernell

Exercise: My Life’s Work

Your work life probably began when you were young. Perhaps your first job led you to your lifelong career. Or maybe it’s a reminder of work you never want to do again. Some of your most significant milestones are connected to your work life.

Review the following memory joggers.

• What was the first job you ever had that involved a regular paycheck? How old were you?
• How did you get this job?
• What were your job responsibilities?
• What was the best part about this work? What did you not like about it?
• Did it lead to something bigger and better?
• Did it help you decide on what you did or did not want to do with your life?

Write a short paragraph about your “dream job.” We’ve all been asked as children, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Think back to your childhood dreams of your possible career. Was it an astronaut? Major league baseball player? Actor? What are your talents? What makes you happy? Let your imagination go, and freely fantasize about a job you would create for yourself.

Now you have jump-started your creative juices, and you are ready to write on your life’s work.