Mercenary Work is a Limp Woman
Have you ever given everything you had, vast numbers of hours, to hell with lunch and breaks and going for a soda, only to have someone say it’s no big deal, because you’re getting paid? The mercenary view of work, otherwise known as wage prostitution. Sure, you’re being paid because you work, but is that all it is, really? I mean, is that enough? God, I hope not.
Frankly, I feel sorry for anyone who finds work to be a simple matter of math. I want to work at things that possess me with intriguing problems and enticing challenges. If it was just about getting paid, I’d cave to the highest bidder, right? But when it’s everything I have, when I’ve spent all the sweat I can muster, the last thing on my mind is “Oh well I was adequately compensated.”
Adequately compensated? Nothing can compensate for the most productive hours of the best years of your life. They can’t be purchased with anything of like value - they’re invaluable - rather they are meant to purchase something else - meaning. If all that expenditure means is that transitory little check in the bank, well ho hum I might as well sell my tail on some sidewalk in Vegas, because it sure would be less hassle, not to mention more lucrative. That’s right, I’ve still got it. So let’s not play nihilistic little mind games - payroll is the basic expense reimbursement for living in such a way that you’re available to dedicate your mind at all. It’s not the point, any more than gasoline is the point of an automobile.
Work is about meaning, and people that talk about the check being everything don’t believe anything means anything. Mercenary nihilists - that’s what they are. They wouldn’t know the work that amounts to heroism, much less genius, or its value, if it bit them. At times, I work for the passion of it, and at times I work for my family, but I’ll be damned if I work like I work for a few extra digits. I want the digits, but I want everything else, too.
I want the awe, the applause, the sympathy, or whatever else goes to heroes - not for its own sake, but because it’s appropriate whenever I’m that freaking amazing. When I do in a few days what would normally take three people a week, and I can barely feel my brain as I fall down to sleep, I’m a freaking monster and, while I don’t necessarily need everyone else to realize it all the time (I’m a man; I’m used to people not realizing it), I’m certainly not going to lose sight of it. If not applause, then aplomb.
“You got a check - that’s all that matters” is just the flipside of “You got my time, that’s all that matters”. Saying it’s just about cash is the same as me saying it’s just about punching the clock. Ever been with a woman who wasn’t feeling anything? Yeah, work without meaning, work without desire, work without more than a check, is just like that. It’s pretty far from amazing. Again, I want the awe… 
