Working with Love and Distaste

"If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work." - Kahlil Gibran

What does it mean to work with love? I can think of at least two different ways:

1) We work with love when we love what we do. Of course, there will always be those days where things go less smoothly or there are items that we don't like doing in the midst of what we do like - but on the whole, we enjoy our jobs. We feel a deep connection between what is the core of our beings and what we do to earn a living. The work flows smoothly out of our souls, like fresh vanilla frosting over a warm cake.

2) We work with love when we work with love in our hearts. When we love our coworkers, when we express love to our customers and those dependent on our services, when we respond not in anger or bitterness but in grace and kindness, when arriving at work we are prepared to spread happiness and joy through what we do and how we do it, we work with love.

And what of distaste?

1) We work with distaste when we do not love what we do, when the job has become a heavy burden not just to perform, but to be present at. When we have reached the point of listing our 400 tasks and realizing the percentage of completion never really drops, when we have our time carefully mapped not because we are seeking greater productivity but because we are protecting against accusations, when we toil at something that causes us time and again to come against our basic personal convictions and find reasons to override them, when what we do has no connection at all with who we are or what we feel is important - in all of these, we work with distaste.

2) We work with distaste when we have bitterness or anger in our hearts. When seeing our coworkers raises our defenses, when our manager coming into our office does not bring the hope of a useful exchange but only a listing of things which must be done or ways we have not performed, when we arrive in the morning already prepared for another day battle - in all of these, we have bitterness or anger which has moved from our jobs into our hearts.

So which then is better in the long run, to prevent the acid of our bitterness from eating out our soul?