Post #47: Work and Its Fruits (Gandhi vs. Trollope)

10 July 2023

The kind of wit that finds its readiest expression on t-shirts pronounces work to be “just another four-letter word,” and thereby expresses a sentiment we can all recognize easily enough.

Yet as Freud pointed out in his reflections on the (limited) prospects for human happiness in our world (Civilization and Its Discontents, chapter 2), fruitful work—or “cultivating one’s garden” as Voltaire put it in Candide—is also one of the most indispensable means for giving us a sense of purpose and orientation in life: “No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as an emphasis on working; for this at least assigns him a secure place within one area of reality, that of the human community.” Alas, Freud observed with a sigh with singular understatement, “work is not much prized by men as a path to happiness.” The other pioneers of psychology, Adler and Frankl especially, are not far behind.

Vacations regularly disappoint. Naïfs who expect nothing but freedom and ease from retirement often find emptiness and aimlessness awaiting them instead, at least until they regain their bearings by taking another job or getting active again in some other manner. And sellers of start-ups, like lottery winners, quickly realize, after a few weeks of enjoying what they were hoping would be a carefree life far from the working world (on some paradise island say), that their cares have followed them there, or else they rediscover that the leisured classes have ever dreaded ennui above all else, and not without cause.

Schopenhauer diagnosed in his Aphorisms (V §17) that “making an effort and struggling with resistance is as necessary to human beings as digging is to groundhogs,” and Camus placed the image of Sisyphus (forever rolling his boulder up the hill again) at the center of an entire philosophy (the gist of which was not so much the meaning to be found in work as defiance towards one’s fate before the gods, but never mind.)

Love of labor may be rare—though a lucky few really do like their jobs, at least intermittently, and many more don’t mind them too much so long as they get paid on time—but labors of love, often commanding stupendous effort, are familiar enough to amount almost to a cliché. (Think only of the Eiffel Tower reconstructed in painstaking detail with fifty thousand match-sticks, and the like labors of homebody Herculeses.) How much of this toil is undertaken in the expectation of reward and recognition, how much driven by a single-minded passion that lets nothing get in its way, and how much owed to quiet desperation, can be hard to tell. The writing of books (or blogs) is a case in point.

Tibetan monks are famous for the intricate mandalas they draw with colored sand, taking several weeks or even months to perfect them, only to undo them again in a ritual almost as elaborate as the manner in which they were assembled. (Sweeping them up like so much gathered dust would be more impressive still, but the depicted deities will brook no such treatment, apparently, and who am I to argue.) It is all meant to be an edifying exercise in detachment and the appreciation of impermanence, but one suspects that not all the artists in question would be thrilled to see a cat lie down on their labors before they are done. The touch of pride in their creations, though not sanctioned by the Teaching, probably leaves some monks less indifferent than they should be, strictly speaking, to others admiring especially fine examples of their work, and one suspects that snapshots are more commonly taken than accords perfectly with the principle of complete destruction for the sake of illustrating the dominion of impermanence. The human factor tends to soften such perfect strictness, and rightly so.

A generous share of love in our labors should certainly be helpful, then, constituting as it does the ennobling and redeeming element in everything it enters into—sometimes in purer form, sometimes more alloyed, but always like one of those finer metals that get blended in with steel to keep the rust off and the shine on. The conviction may look to some like an article of faith that requires leaping; let it be so. The forces of separation and disintegration, of enmity and ill-will, cannot be made to disappear by wishing them away—but without the connecting and uniting principle that is love, nothing worthwhile can be accomplished beneath our earthly skies. If you are disposed to dismiss such sentiments as mere sentimentalities, I wish you luck; you will need it.

Add, further, as much detachment and equanimity as possible—in the sense of remaining mindful at all times of the impermanence inherent in all things, and therefore the folly of clinging and clutching to what cannot be preserved. Or as Gandhi put it in a classic essay on the message of the Bhagavad Gita: “Do your allotted work, but renounce the fruits of your action—that is the center around which the Gita is woven, the sun around which devotion, knowledge, and all the rest revolve like planets.”*

In sum, plenty of detached but loving equanimity—very well. But what about pay? We have said nothing yet about the usual compensation we expect for toiling by the sweat of our brow. Back once more to ubiquitous money (see Post #37 and others), and thus to another theme on which Anthony Trollope was wont to wax eloquent (see previous post):

There are many who think that the artist and the author forget the high glories of their calling if they condescend to make a money-return a first object. They who preach this doctrine require the practice of a so-called virtue which is contrary to nature. All material progress has come from man’s desire to do the best he can for himself, and civilisation itself has been made possible by such progress. Now and then a man may arise among us who in his professional enthusiasm utterly disregards money. All will honour his enthusiasm, but it is a mistake to suppose that he is a better man because he despises money. Few do so, and those few suffer a defeat. Who does not desire to be hospitable to his friends, generous to the poor, liberal to all, munificent to his children, and to be himself free from the carking fear which poverty creates?

But hold on, what about the sheer delight of seeing one’s name in print, especially alongside that of a prestigious publisher? The case was put to Trollope by the head of an especially reputable publishing house in London at the time, who urged the recalcitrant author to consider, when their negotiations were stalling, “whether our names on your title-page are not worth more to you than the increased payment.” The dogged literary laborer remained undaunted: “I did think much of Messrs. Longman’s name, but I liked it best at the bottom of a cheque.”

*I am combining two passages in Gandhi’s text that are numbered 7–8 and 15 in what is probably the most widely distributed edition (Navajivan Publishing House). In the Appendix to the translation of the Bhagavad Gita by Stephen Mitchell (Three Rivers Press, 2000), they appear on pp. 213 and 216.