I read two different newspaper stories the other day. One suggested that, if you are a manager, you’re probably working longer and harder than ever before. The other suggested that only a small percentage of us do a job that we really love.
Which makes me think that, as suggested by Henry David Thoreau, there are a lot of people out there – including managers who manage others – who are “leading lives of quiet desperation” and will “go to their graves with their song still in them”.
Fortunately, it’s never too late to find love in your work or find work that you love. All it takes is a switch in attitude from work as a daily grind to work as service to others, from work as a means 
to pay the bills to work as an expression of our God-given gift.
The Lebanese poet, Kahlil Gibran, even suggested that work was love made visible, adding that if you cannot do your work with love then you shouldn’t do it all.
Which is another way of saying: do the work you love and love the work you do.
When you work with love, your whole world changes. You are different and others are different. You become more accepting and understanding. You take off the limitations. And your Emotional Quotient level goes sky-high.
What’s more, love is the quality that everyone can bring to their jobs. You don’t need qualifications or an entry exam or references. It’s there inside every single one of us just waiting for expression.
Nor do you need to be doing work in a loving or caring sector. Or work of great importance. Or work at an exalted organisational level. As Mother Teresa said, “We cannot do great things on this earth. We can only do small things with great love.”
I guess that the real role models for doing work with love are those who don’t have to do it to earn their daily bread. I mean young children. If you’ve ever seen 3 or 4-year olds creating something with lego bricks or building a sandcastle on a windswept beach in April, you’ll know that true love for your work is simple, uncomplicated, and totally beguiling.
I urge you to make finding the work you love a lifetime’s duty. And if it needs time to get there, to do your present work with as much love as you can muster. I’ll leave you with the words of Andre Soltner who runs a New York restaurant called Lutece and has surely found work that he loves.
“I am more than thirty years a chef. I know what I am doing and each day I do my absolute best. I cook from my heart with love. It must be the same with service. The waiter must serve with love. Otherwise, the food is nothing. Many times I will go to the tables to take the orders myself. It starts right then and there.
That feeling the customer must have is relaxation. If not, then his evening is ruined. Mine too by the way. How can he love if he’s not relaxed? People ask me all the time what secrets I have. I tell them there is nothing mysterious about Lutece. I put love in my cooking and love in the serving. That’s all.”
- Eric
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