There is a lot of advice available to my Grade 12's for answering this question. Perhaps the most popular advice is, in the words of Steve Jobs, "You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers."
But I see at least two significant problems with this popular "do what you love" advice.
- It's confusing. The follow-up question leaves the graduating student no further ahead: "What do I love?"
- It is neither true nor respectful to many Canadians.
Of course, if we take a look at the people who advise young people to "do what they love" - inspirational speakers, successful business owners, teachers - this slogan is often true for these people. I'm privileged to find myself in a career that is (at least most days) easy to love. I spend my days with bright young people who inspire me and my evenings planning lessons about exciting concepts. While a few people have negative things to say about teachers, for the most part, mention of my career invokes positive stereotypes like, "You must be very patient" or "You must wear adorable cardigans". I get to work in a career that is quite loveable, and one from which I have the option of telling the next generation that they ought to find a career like mine.
But we have a problem here. There are a few fortunate Canadians who do what they love. Meanwhile, the majority do what they can.
The individualistic focus of "do what you love" assumes that our society doesn't need the people who are working in hard-to-love jobs. Instead of respecting their work, it treats them as lesser people, who have settled for their careers. Or worse, it avoids the issue all together and pretends they don't exist.
But on my drive to school tomorrow, I'll drive on roads that are well salted and sanded. Probably not because years ago, a high school student had an innate passion for salting and sanding roads, but because that person was willing to do a job that provides safety for all of us. When I pick up a coffee on the way, it's possible that the man who took my order was born with a love for selling coffee. But odds are that he's there to make a living and serve his community in a way that he can.
"Do what you love" does to the ideology of careers what folks like Peter Schiff would like to do to the economy of careers. If you missed the headline, Schiff is the CEO who was recently quoted to say that a person who is "mentally retarded" should be happy working for 2$ an hour because "you're worth what you're worth" in an interview about the potential of raising minimum wage. He later corrected his statement, assuring us that he intended to say that an "intellectually disabled" person should work for 2$ an hour. I don't think anyone felt terribly assured.
While Schiff's reasoning would widen the economic gap between the rich and poor, intentionally or not, Job's philosophy widens the emotional gap between the rich and the poor. "Do what you love" sounds inspirational. But it's also an excuse to ignore or look down on the people who make our society function. We can claim that the poor aren't like us because they failed to take our most excellent advice and pursue a career that they love. And that isn't the sort of message I want to pass on to my graduating students.
But not all is lost in the search for a soundbite of advice for my graduating students. A few sentences after his "find what you love" statement, Jobs says, "The only way to do great work is to love what you do". While Jobs treats these two statements as largely interchangeable in his graduation speech, I think there is an important difference.
While we can't all do what we love, we can all find something to love in what we do. At its core, a career is simply doing something worthwhile for society. Whether or not that something is admired in our culture, whether or not that something is easy to love - that something is worthwhile. Wherever my graduating students serve in their careers, I hope that they can find ways to love what they do.
