Yesterday, while learning how to use the tele-prompter, it dawned on me that I have four jobs: I’m a partner at Kapunan Tamano Javier & Associates, Dean of the College of Law at Liceo University, a columnist for The Philippine STAR, and, soon, a host of a TV program. Now it isn’t as if I didn’t know that I had these jobs, obviously I’ve been doing the work necessary to be able to discharge my responsibilities and duties for each of my vocations; rather, the realization came with a healthy and heavy dose of gratefulness and thankfulness to have work.
Why four jobs? Well, a big part of it is because I have to work, which roughly translated as, “I’ve got lots of bills to pay!” I am not the scion of a wealthy clan, my dad was a simple public servant and although he attained high public office as a senator and vice governor, thankfully, he never stole from public coffers and so I was never raised in the manner of the wealthy. I recall that when my father was in the Senate in the late ’80s, my classmates at Ateneo de Manila University were pleasantly surprised to know that I happily commuted via jeepney or bus to school. (Of course, traffic and urban pollution were not as terrible as they are today, but I digress.) Simply, the purpose of my reference to our family’s middle-class status is to emphasize that I don’t have a trust fund — though having one wouldn’t be such a bad thing — in which to conveniently dip into to pay my credit card, electric, water, gas, and other bills. No trust fund equals I have to work. In addition to the usual bills, since our eldest son Santi is within the autistic spectrum, my wife and I have to pay for his various therapies, specialists, a shadow teacher, and buy gluten-free food — generally more expensive than its gluten-ladened kin — which naturally eats up a significant chunk of our family income.
However, another part of the answer to the question as to why I have four jobs is because I like the work and I like to work. Liking the work means I find all four of my vocations challenging and interesting. For example, for the TV show, I have to learn a whole new set of skills like reading tele-prompters, reviewing scripts, and even learning about television effects. Although by no means do I want to create the impression that I’m a workaholic. Workaholics do their labor and their tasks out of an addiction to it. They find their meaning and fulfillment solely from work. While I acknowledge the dignified aspects of work, I can find equal amounts of fulfillment from my leisure time with my family. Put another way, I’m not a workaholic because nothing gives me greater pleasure than spending my Sundays at home, goofing off with my wife and kids, just lazing in our bedroom reading or watching TV.
Part of the reason that I enjoy work is predicated on the Islamic ethos of work, which emphasizes the dignity inherent in all kinds of decent and honest occupations. Islam places great stress on the value of work. There is a verse in the Quran that reads, “That man can have nothing but what he strives for; That (the fruit of) his striving will soon come in sight: Then will he be rewarded with a complete reward.” For me, this underscores the fundamental reality of work — or striving — as a necessary first element or condition sine qua non in achieving a full and good life. In other words, if we want to be rewarded in this life, or in the next, then you have to roll up your sleeves and get down to work.
In fact, Islam goes beyond the mundane contemplation of work and, similar to the ethos of the Catholic Opus Dei, views work as a form of worship. There is a Muslim story about a prophet who had seen a man who devoted his entire life solely to prayer. This man did no labor and had no occupation and would instead spend his waking hours purely in worship. When the prophet asked this man where he obtained his food to stay alive, the man answered that he got it from his brother, who toiled in order to provide him with sustenance. In response to this, the prophet told the man very simply, “Your brother is more religious than you are.” As demonstrated by this story, Islam exalts honest work to a higher form of worship.
But if work is so important and vital, what about the vaunted work-life balance? Personally, I don’t see the wisdom in making such a clear-cut dichotomy between work and life. To make a clear demarcation between the two ultimately demeans the other. This dualistic approach makes your work and toil insignificant, since it isn’t part of your true life anyway, and makes your vocations nothing more than utility, a pure means to an end. For me, I see work as much a part of my life as leisure, family time, or hours for study and enrichment. When I do my work well — provide sound legal advice to my client, write a good piece for my column, or administer the college of law properly — I feel a sense of fulfillment and “alive-ness,” emotional states that shouldn’t be relegated only to my off-work hours. So while others might lament having too much to do, I instead feel incredibly grateful and blessed to have work.
My hypothesis is that those who are overly engrossed in achieving a perfect state of work-life balance are merely unhappy with their work and so, while on the job, have their eye on the clock, waiting for it to strike five so that they can leave the oppressiveness of their work and move on to their “real” life apres work. Unfortunately for these people, their discontent for their work will follow them home. And while we may not have the privilege of having our dream jobs as of yet, thinking of one’s work as separate and distinct from one’s real life only serves to undermine the opportunity to find fulfillment in one’s work. In Islam, as in Christianity, honest work, no matter how humble, simple, or unglamorous, has true dignity. Didn’t Christ do the humble work of washing the feet of his apostles to emphasize that even the most blessed and exalted should be willing to do the most mundane of tasks? So why say that work isn’t a genuine part of our lives?
Of course, being a husband and a father are full time jobs as well, far more important than any occupation that I might undertake. And I label them as jobs not to demean or to make light of the responsibilities inherent in being a spouse or a parent but rather to do the opposite: to stress that both roles require striving, effort, and toil in order to obtain rewards for myself and my family. In fact, one of the things that I am forever grateful for is how my parents showed me the importance of work. My father and my mother were never lazy and were always striving to excel in whatever job they undertook, whether it be public service, NGO work, or even small businesses. Again, it is the Islamic ethic of Allah ordaining and prescribing excellence in all things that pushed my parents to strive in their work.
This value for work is something that I hope to impress upon my children as well. We let our kids do small chores, such as fixing their bed or cleaning up their rooms, and later get rewards or gifts for completing them to demonstrate that if you work, then, afterwards, you receive rewards. Also, every morning, when they ask us why we are about to leave the house, we remind them we do it to work so that we can pay for their books, toys, and food. And when I get home from a long day of work, sometimes bone-tired, all I have to see are my two children safe and happy at home to remind me why I work.