I’m facing the classic What Do I Do With Myself question that every school break has asked me since the beginning of school breaks. I spent the beginning of today helping my dad paint the new shed in the side yard. I really didn’t want to, but I wanted to be helpful, I wanted to repay my dad for so much that he has done for me (painting a shed doesn’t begin to close the gap of what I owe him), and I thought it would be a good idea to keep myself occupied doing something productive.
That word, though: productive. Now there’s a loaded term. I often think I want to be productive, or that I am doing something productive, but do I have the first idea about what that word means? What am I actually producing. My mind floats back to an episode of Philosophize This! about Hannah Arendt, where the host (the excellent Stephen West) lists Arendt’s three major arenas that comprise a meaningful human life: labor, work, and action. For Arendt, “work” meant producing something that creates shared culture (the “setting” in which our human lives take place), whether that contribution is a poem, a sack of potatoes, or a flashlight. Whatever the contribution is, the key is that it adds to our shared culture; that is, other people necessarily encounter the thing that you have worked on.
When I’m at school, teaching, my work is apparent to me. I am directly impacting the lives of more than 100 students every day, plus my coworkers, plus whichever lives my influence indirectly touches through those direct encounters. While it’s true I’m not constructing any kind of physical product, I can still wrap my mind around what it is I am working on: a kinder, wiser, more thoughtful future composed of those minds and hearts I am trying to shape.
When I’m on vacation, my work is much less obvious. I feel like I am consuming so much more than I produce. So far, on this break alone, I have consumed the work of several musicians, three films, dozens of episodes of television, a handful of video games, and parts of three books. That’s a lot of consumption in a week! I almost feel selfish. Do I not owe it to the world to produce? Am I not pulling my cultural weight? What’s more, I want to contribute to the culture, even in the most microscopic of ways.
Maybe it’s just me, but I sense most people want to contribute to our shared culture; most people want to leave some kind of legacy. Some more than others, probably, but I think we all want to contribute, yet it appears that so few actually do.
Or, maybe, I’m being narrow-minded about this. There are several people who immediately spring to my mind, people who have never published a book, or released a film, or sold a painting, but who have assuredly made the world better in less tangible ways. It’s quite possible that I’m projecting my own fantasies and shortcomings onto others, and in doing so, I’m ignoring the invisible work people engage in every day: the work of uttering kind words, providing financial support, or providing steadfast friendship (just to name a few).
Is that the answer to my What Do I Do With Myself question? In time away from my obvious work, can I continue working in important-yet-quieter ways? I do feel as if, at this point in my life, my influence touches fewer lives than ever before (a paradox for another essay), but shouldn’t that give me an opportunity to put even more of myself toward those few lives to which I have access?
It’s likely that I’ll always be unsatisfied. That’s what it means to be human; in the river of life, if we stop paddling ahead, we’re yanked violently downstream. As soon as I think I’ve found fulfillment in one aspect of my work, I will probably feel pulled toward another aspect I deem lacking. But the important thing is to work toward something, whether or not people can see my contribution to the world with their own two eyes.
December 19, 2019
Riverside, CA
Unsolicited Essays 