In favor, yes, of work
Do you remember the movie Hidden Figures? It tells the true story of the first African-American female mathematicians who were decisive at NASA during the space race. The translated title of the book it was based on, Talentos ocultos, seems more accurate to me: it describes the brilliance and perseverance of those women in a socially brutal era for them. But what truly moved me was their passion for work. The light in their eyes. The hours they spent without realizing it. The absolute involvement in what they were doing.
Today, a decade later, I wonder if a movie with these values would find its audience. Words like vocation, involvement, passion for work seem to have disappeared from the collective vocabulary. We live in a pendulum society, where only extremes fit. And now the pendulum has swung all the way to one side: it seems that the only possible source of happiness is leisure and domestic life. Surveys confirm this: a majority of young people prefer not to progress professionally if it implies less quality of life, understood as personal time. And if we listen to our future doctors who have just chosen a specialty in the MIR, the word vocation is hard to find among the sea of chosen arguments: fashion, economic benefit, proximity... in a word, convenience, prevail.
It is legitimate to ask ourselves if all this is a lack of a culture of effort or a conscious and lucid reaction against decades of labor exploitation. Probably, both at the same time. It is an undeniable advance that our youth are not willing to sacrifice their lives for undignified conditions. Throughout the last century, work was the obligatory – and often tyrannical – axis around which existence revolved. Feminism and social democracy have managed, with great effort, to establish personal time as a fundamental right. This is a gain we must not lose.
But there is a silent trap in the most comfortable option. Giving up growing, avoiding risk, staying close: decisions that seem protective and that, in the long term, can erode motivation and mental health in a way we don't see coming. Because people need goals, objectives, projects. We need to feel that we are contributing to something bigger than ourselves.
Years ago, I conducted a qualitative study interviewing women at various levels of companies. The result was unanimous: the more professional progress, the more self-esteem, the more satisfaction, the more life purpose. It wasn't just a matter of money or status. It was a matter of meaning. Waldinger and Schulz, in A Good Life, present the results of the Harvard Study of Adult Development —initiated in 1938, it has studied three generations of families— and reach a powerful conclusion: involvement in life goals is one of the pillars of happiness. And many jobs, when developed under decent conditions, provide them.
Work gives us economic independence —essential to be truly free—, socialization, emotional and professional bonds, and the deep satisfaction of contributing to the world with our effort. For many women, moreover, this independence is not just a matter of personal fulfillment: it is the difference between a free life and a trapped life, between being able to leave a violent situation and having nowhere to go.
We go for walks, runs, and to the gym to care for our bodies, but exercising the mind, sustaining an intellectual or creative challenge is equally or more determining for our well-being. When a job absorbs you, you don't watch the clock. This happens when it's new, when you're building something, when you're an entrepreneur, when you feel that what you do matters. It's not exploitation: it's the difference between surviving and living.
Health is balance. Personal and family life, yes, and without negotiation. Professional life, too. Decent and fair working conditions, of course. Recognition of domestic and care work —which continues to fall disproportionately, and unpaid, on women—, essential. And yes, there are other ways to find involvement and purpose: volunteering, community projects, creation. But balance is not found by abandoning half the scale.
When some journalists asked Sigmund Freud, as he got off a plane returning to Vienna, what the key to happiness was, he replied: "To love and to work." Two words. A hundred years later, there isn't much more to add.