The Work Itself Is the Reward

Your privilege is the work itself. The daily opportunity to create, to serve, to struggle toward something meaningful.

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Transcript

Tennessee Williams, the celebrated American playwright, sat in his luxury hotel suite, silk curtains drawn against the morning sun. Three years had passed since The Glass Menagerie made him rich and famous. The maid had already cleaned. Room service waited outside. He had nowhere to be, nothing urgent to create.

And yet… he felt dead inside.

A story I first read in Billy Oppenheimer's excellent "Six at 6" newsletter, and that immediately struck me as a perfect illustration of what the Yogis teach about work.

Before success, Williams operated elevators for minimum wage. Seven dollars a week for food after rent. He wrote plays between shifts. He wrote stories during lunch breaks. Each word fought against exhaustion.

"I was not aware of how much vital energy had gone into this struggle until the struggle was removed," he would later write.

The luxuries that replaced his hardships left him hollow. Success had given him everything except purpose. He grew paranoid about people's motives. He resented the very work that freed him.

"The heart of man," he wrote, "is forged in a white-hot furnace for the purpose of conflict." Remove that conflict, and man becomes "a sword cutting daisies."

Not privation but luxury is the wolf at the door.

This echoes what Mabel Collins wrote on Light on the Path: "Kill out ambition but work as those who are ambitious." A paradox that confuses modern minds. How can you work hard without wanting success?

Williams learned the answer through pain. When he worked those mundane jobs while writing in margins, he embodied this truth unknowingly. The work itself sustained him. The daily struggle to create despite circumstances.

Because work performed for its own sake connects us to something vital. Work pursued only for rewards disconnects us from ourselves.

Your privilege is not success. Your privilege is the work itself. The daily opportunity to create, to serve, to struggle toward something meaningful. This is what the human organism was created for. Work is one of the great blessings and privileges of the human race.

The work itself is the reward.