Writing the Shadow: The Shadow in work
You work hard. You make a living.
Nothing wrong with that attitude, right?
It’s what we’re taught from an early age and, like so much of life, it’s not a problem until it goes to extremes.
Not achieving what you want to? Work harder. Can’t get ahead? Work harder. Not making a good enough living? Work harder.
People who don’t work hard are lazy. They don’t deserve handouts or benefits. People who don’t work hard aren’t useful, so they are not valued members of our culture and community.
But what about the old or the sick, the mentally ill, or those with disabilities? What about children?
What about the unemployed? The under-employed?
What about those who are — or will be — displaced by technology, those called “the useless class” by historian Yuval Noah Harari in his book Homo Deus?
What if we become one of these in the future?
Who am I if I cannot work?
The Shadow side of my attitude to work became clear when I caught COVID in the summer of 2021.
I was the sickest I’d ever been. I spent two weeks in bed unable to even think properly, and six weeks after that, I was barely able to work more than an hour a day before lying in the dark and waiting for my energy to return. I was limited in what I could do for another six months after that. At times, I wondered if I would ever get better.
Jonathan kept urging me to be patient and rest.
But I don’t know how to rest. I know how to work and how to sleep.
I can do ‘active rest,’ which usually involves walking a long way or traveling somewhere interesting, but those require a stronger mind and body than I had during those months.
It struck me that even if I recovered from the virus, I had glimpsed my future self.
One day, I will be weak in body and mind.
If I’m lucky, that will be many years away and hopefully for a short time before I die — but it will happen.
I am an animal. I will die. My body and mind will pass on and I will be no more.
Before then I will be weak.
Before then, I will be useless.
Before then, I will be a burden.
I will not be able to work… But who am I if I cannot work? What is the point of me?
I can’t answer these questions right now, because although I recognise them as part of my Shadow, I’ve not progressed far enough to have dealt with them entirely.
My months of COVID gave me some much-needed empathy for those who cannot work, even if they want to. We need to reframe what work is as a society, and value humans for different things, especially as technology changes what work even means. That starts with each of us.
“Illness, affliction of body and soul, can be life-altering. It has the potential to reveal the most fundamental conflict of the human condition: the tension between our infinite, glorious dreams and desires and our limited, vulnerable, decaying physicality.”
—Connie Zweig, The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul
Questions:
• What does ‘work’ mean to you?
• Where have those opinions come from?
• How will you define yourself if you cannot work?
• What aspects of work might be in your Shadow?
• What might be some healthier ways to look at work? Are there changes you can make in your life now to incorporate these?
Resources:
• Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow — Yuval Noah Harari
• The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul — Connie Zweig
