Topical Guide 359
Mark Dorset
Work: As a Tonic, As a Curse
May turned to look at her, just for a moment. Lorna put a smile on her face. “It is hopeless,” she said. She laughed. “It’s a hopeless situation, but you don’t have to feel miserable about it. Maybe we should feel miserable about it, but I don’t — not any more.”
“Oh?” said May. “Did you meet a man in Baltimore?”
“No!” said Lorna. She grinned in the dark. “I — found something to — keep me going. It was very difficult there. The work they wanted us to do was impossible. Every day we fell farther behind. We just couldn’t do everything they wanted us to do. It was impossible. It was a hopeless situation. We all knew they were disappointed in us, and we were disappointed, too. But I didn’t feel miserable about it. The others didn’t, either. Somewhere along the line, we all decided — those of us who stuck it out — not everybody did — that we would do everything we could do and that was all we could do.”
“I see those logic puzzles have paid off,” said May. Lorna poked her shoulder.
“I worked as much as I could,” Lorna went on, “and I got as much done as I could.”Herb ’n’ Lorna, Chapter 15
On the one hand:
Employment is the great instrument of intellectual dominion. The mind cannot retire from its enemy into total vacancy, or turn aside from one object but by passing to another. The gloomy and the resentful are always found among those who have nothing to do, or who do nothing.
Samuel Johnson: Idler #72 (September 1, 1759)
But on the other hand:
It very seldom happens to man that his business is his pleasure. What is done from necessity is so often to be done when against the present inclination, and so often fills the mind with anxiety, that an habitual dislike steals upon us, and we shrink involuntarily from the remembrance of our task. This is the reason why almost everyone wishes to quit his employment; he does not like another state, but is disgusted with his own.
Samuel Johnson: Idler #102 (March 29, 1760)
See also: Work, Labor TG 5; Endless Tasks TG 86; Tasks, Sisyphean TG 89; Day Jobs; Working at Cross-Purposes TG 120
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