Work Yourself to Death? Not a Bad Idea!

George Burns was guilty of some really fabulous quotes, most of them quite funny, some deadly serious. Many had to do with his advancing age (he died in 1996 at age 100). Here are a few:

Retire? I’m going to stay in show business until I’m the only one left.
People are always asking me when I’m going to retire. Why should I? I’ve got it two ways – I’m still making movies, and I’m a senior citizen, so I can see myself at half price.
How can I die? I’m booked.
As long as you’re working, you stay young.

Michelangelo died at 89 – at a time when the average lifespan was less than half that – still working as the architect for the replacement of a 4th-century Constantinian basilica that became St. Peter’s Basilica, called by some as the “greatest creation of the Renaissance.” He also worked on a sculpture (the Rondani Peita) up until six days before his death.

Steve Jobs was widely reported to have died yelling about something not being exactly perfectly correct – and is reported to have been working until the last day.

Einstein never stopped.

Revisiting vocāre

Today we treat folks who choose to “work themselves until death” as some sort of wunderkinds or anomalies when a mere 150 years ago that was the norm. That was before the Industrial Revolution changed the landscape of work and injected the concept of the artificial finish line called retirement.

In the process, it seems we’ve redefined, convoluted and distorted an important word. That word is vocation.

Vocation is rooted in the Latin vocāre, meaning to call, which suggests listening for something that calls out to you, a voice telling me what I am.

Today, we relate vocation to specialized training into a “career track” or a “job” via a vocational or trade school versus a “profession” calling for a bachelor degree or higher. Not likely a pursuit of a “higher calling” but more a decision based on need and what may be trending in the “job” market.

Grammarist.com defines a vocation as “a calling, an occupation, or a large undertaking for which one is especially suited. It can be roughly synonymous with career or profession, though vocation connotes a seriousness or a commitment that these words don’t always bear.”

Today, we tend to mix vocation in with two other words – career and job – when their distinctions are quite different.

Career

A quick look at the definition of “career” shows a big difference. Career has its origin in the Latin word “carrus” or “wheeled vehicle” denoting a “cart” and then later from the French word “carrier” denoting a road or racecourse. The dictionary defines career, as a verb, to mean “move swiftly and in an uncontrolled way in a specified direction.”

Careers for many are just that – a mad rush for a long time that ends up going nowhere and with that realization coming late in life. Or maybe it’s going somewhere in terms of provision and accumulation, but not in a way that fits the definition of a “calling”.

The checkered flag at the end of this racecourse is that coveted pot of gold toward the end of life’s rainbow called retirement, a finish line that may have blocked moving toward a true calling.

Job

A job is the most immediate and relatable term as it’s what we do every day to produce income, the fuel that keeps us on the aforementioned racecourse. The dictionary defines job as “a lump, chore or duty.” For some, that lump is “coal”. Consider that the average job is around 3.2 years and that during the average lifespan, most of us will have had a dozen or more “jobs”.

Does sound like a racetrack doesn’t it? Perhaps that old word denoting a calling is what is missing. As we zip past mid-life into our second half, it would be a good time to re-evaluate, resurrect and reapply vocation in its true, traditional meaning.

But I’m passing 50 – too late to find my “calling”?

It’s a pretty common question amongst mid-lifer’s. There’s that uneasy stirring going on deep in the gut. More days behind than ahead; lost enthusiasm for the chosen “racetrack”; a growing sense of aimlessness and emptiness; accumulation no longer important; the “who am I and why am I here”, “is it too late to make a difference?” questions that won’t go away.

It’s a critical fork-in-the-road time of life. One road gives in to the “social self” that has indoctrinated us into an artificial age-related culture and encourages us to remain a part of the crowd and stay-the-course to a landing called retirement.

The other road acknowledges a long-suppressed “essential self” that is insensitive to age and puts us on a trail that can enable a new takeoff rather than a landing. Only this time the takeoff is launched through a re-discovery and resurrection of our deepest dreams and desires but applied using our deepest talents and acquired skills.

Warning!

The second fork may mean you will, willingly, work yourself to (until) death.

Second warning!

You may:

Live longer
Live healthier
Change the world in some positive way

Evidence has been in for a long time. Work is necessary for longer, healthier living.

Polls of centenarians have revealed that an astonishingly high percentage of them continue to work and that they rank working alongside being able to walk as one of the keys to their longevity.

The universe doesn’t want your parts back yet

I’m a huge fan and follower of Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach, the most successful entrepreneurial coaching program on the planet. In a recent podcast from a series entitled “Exponential Wisdom” that he does with Peter Diamandis, Dan stated that he feels he has “disenfranchised” most of the 18,000 entrepreneurs he has trained from the idea of retirement. He and Diamandis have tagged retirement as the “ultimate casualty.”

Together, they emphatically emphasize that “stopping and retirement means you are ready to retire your bits back to the universe.”

Not sure about you, I’m in no hurry.