Is it OK to just work all the time?
A conversation with Ira Glass
Happy New Year, we’re back with more episodes for you.
For our first episode in the new year, a reflection on how we spend our time. What we devote our life to, and the roads we choose not to take. A conversation with Ira Glass.
Our show is a funny mix. Some weeks we address a question with a documentary, some weeks we address a question with a conversation. This week’s episode was a conversation I felt really lucky to get to have.
Partly because some of these choices — how much to work, whether to have kids — are just really hard to talk about. It’s rare to find someone willing to be candid about these choices, in public. Which means that when we have to make those choices ourselves, we have less to go on than we otherwise would. I don’t know. One of the things this show is trying to learn is how to create a public space for the kind of long talk that usually happens in private.
For me, this week, we captured that feeling.
Things mentioned in this episode
The very first episode of This American Life.
Joe Frank, interviewed by Jonathan Goldstein.
Search Engine Live!
February 20th, in Brooklyn. With special guest Kelefa Sanneh, New Yorker writer and, more famously, the host of Search Engine Engine. There are a handful of tickets left.
Next week… a story about the internet, with one of our favorite recurring correspondents.
Feel free to talk about kids, not kids, work, not work in the comments, but please (I feel like I don’t have to say this to you guys) be immensely respectful of each other.
See you all soon,
PJ
PJ,
I can do you one better.
I work. Full time. And it costs ME money to go to work. In comparing the costs associated with my job (commute, bus fare, parking, gas, tolls, dry cleaning etc.) vs. what I receive back in my paycheck, it works out to be I’m paying $100/week more than I see back in my paycheck. I love my job that much.
Would you (or Ira) do that?
I am a primary care physician who is married and child free by choice. I was never anti-having children, it was just never something I really wanted to do, though I was open to the possibility that my mind may change, as so many people repeatedly told me over the years it would. But as the years have gone by, though I occasionally explored in my mind the possibilities of having children, those visions never felt like a reality I really wanted. Not that I wouldn’t be happy if I had chosen to have children, but after much pondering, I felt that in my case, what was really required was the courage to make the uncomfortable choice by taking the path less traveled that just felt more right for me.
In my work, which I find very meaningful, I’ve had the privilege of being able to talk to people of all ages from all walks of life who’ve made very different decisions about how to live it, and I’ve been lucky enough to have conversations about this topic with people in their 70s and 80s who are child free by choice, and continue to have no regrets, and these happy people with good lives gave me hope.
There are seasons of life. Seasons of being single, seasons of dating, marriage, education/training, career building, seasons of stress or joy. There’s nothing wrong with having periods of your life that are dedicated mostly to one thing.
Personally, I never felt I didn’t want children so that I could have an amazing work life, and this used to hang over my head. It seemed like there was an expectation that if one chooses not to have children, that one’s life or work must be extraordinary in some other way. But I have overcome that school of thought. I do want my work to be great, but it was never my goal for it to be the pinnacle of my existence. In regards to your questions about legacy and death beds, I know that in my dying days, or rather in any of the meaningful moments of my life, I will not be thinking about my work, and my patients will not be thinking about me, and there is nothing wrong with that. I have realized that I am someone who cares more about living a values-based life than a goals-based life. I enjoy striving and accomplishing, but I live for more than that. I have come to understand that a person‘s legacy is the quality of relationships they had with other people. For some people, those people are their children, but that does not have to be the answer for everyone. I’ve also come to understand that there is no meaning of life out there to be found, rather it is something one creates oneself.
Though I do find my work meaningful, I have found meaning outside of work in deciding to be part of “the village” in the lives of people rearing children, but also the village that supports anyone who could use some time and attention. I can be the person who can easily lend a listening ear to my aging parents, my sister who is a harried mother of three and business owner, my overwhelmed friends with children, my single friends. I can be the person with the extra bandwidth to be there, or even the person with extra expendable income to invest in things I care about, whether that’s the lives of my nieces and nephews, or nonprofits whose causes I support, though I understand that the most valuable thing I share with others is my attention.
There are no choices that allow you to have it all; you will always be missing out on some other version of your life that could’ve been. There are no major choices where there are no chances for regrets. You have to make the choices that feel most right for you, most true to your inner self, imagining all the potential rewards and challenges that could result. What are you willing to sacrifice? What kind of hardship are you willing to suffer, for what ends?
It’s okay to be different than others, or want different things than others. It can be uncomfortable at times, but it’s worse to live a life trying to fit the common mold only to realize it was never true to yourself. We do not have to endure the same journeys and experience the same transformations in order to have a life that is complete and worthy of respect.
Having the courage to face unknowns, uncertainty, external judgments, and believing you know yourself enough to find your own way is what it takes to live an authentic life.