Work.
We can’t go forwards or backwards in this story without discussing work. Because work is what propelled us into this search for Te Aute Crossroad and work was an essential component of everything that followed. This cross-country trek—our relocation from the bright lights of Melbourne to the dark skies of Central Hawke’s Bay—was not just a geographical change, but a transition: a (not entirely conscious…or even rational) choice to renegotiate our relationship with work.
We all have our own relationship with work, obviously, but I suspect each is a variation, a different combination, of its three primary colours: Financial, Social, Intellectual. Work is a means to make the money we need to fund our lives; work creates opportunities for relationships and collaboration with others: workmates, clients, peers; and work brings us problems that we enjoy solving. We all differ in where we place our emphasis—some are most interested in making money, others value fellowship and belonging above all, and others, such as potters, writers and musicians (but also scholars) will forgo both of those things for the challenge and stimulation of their chosen field.
Charles Handy, a prolific business writer in the 1980s, took it further. He suggested that we’re all climbing a ladder…discovering who we are as we progress from financial survival to expressing ourselves: Life, I now think, he wrote, is really a search for our own identity[1]. He reckons we all reach a stage in our lives where what we most want is to leave a legacy: The sobering thought is that individuals and societies are not, in the end, remembered for how they made their money, but for how they spent it.
Maybe this story does end with leaving a legacy of some kind, but that’s sure not where it starts. Where it starts is somewhere back down the ladder a way, in that ‘social’ space I suggested: relationships and collaboration. And, specifically, with questions 4 and 5 from Gallup’s Q12 approach[2]:
4. In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?
5. Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?
More on that anon.
[1] In Myself and Other Important Matters published in 2006
[2] https://www.gallup.com/q12/